So: whether he will excuse or no, he walks away. He walks into the next room. You have heard the expression, ‘My blood was boiling’? His blood is boiling. He crosses his wrists. He sits down on a chest and calls for a drink. When it is fetched he takes into his right hand the cool pewter cup, running the pads of his fingers around its curves: the wine is strong claret, he spills a drop, he blots it with his forefinger and for neatness touches it with his tongue, so it vanishes. He cannot say whether the trick has decreased the pain, as Walter said it would. But he is glad his father is with him. Someone must be.

He looks up. Chapuys’s face is hovering over him: smiling, a mask of malice. ‘My dear friend. I thought your last hour had come. Do you know, I thought you would forget yourself and hit him?’

He looks up and smiles. ‘I never forget myself. What I do, I mean to do.’

‘Though you may not mean what you say.’

He thinks, the ambassador has suffered cruelly, just for doing his job. In addition, I have injured his feelings, I have been ironical about his hat. Tomorrow I shall organise him a present, a horse, a horse of some magnificence, a horse for his own riding. I myself, before it departs my stables, will lift a hoof and check the shoe.

The king’s council meets next day. Wiltshire, or Monseigneur, is present: the Boleyns are sleek cats, lolling in their seats and preening their whiskers. Their kinsman, the Duke of Norfolk, looks ragged, unnerved; he stops him on the way in – stops him, Cromwell – ‘All right, lad?’

Was ever the Master of the Rolls so addressed, by the Earl Marshal of England? In the council chamber Norfolk scuffles the stools about, creaks down on one that suits him. ‘That’s what he does, you know.’ He flashes him a grin, a glimpse of fang. ‘You’re balanced just so, standing on your feet, then he blows the pavement from under you.’

He nods, smiling patiently. Henry comes in, sits like a great sulky baby on a chair at the head of the table. Meets no one’s eye.

Now: he hopes his colleagues know their duties. He has told them often enough. Flatter Henry. Beseech Henry. Implore him to do what you know he must do anyway. So Henry feels he has a choice. So he feels a warm regard for himself, as if he is not consulting his own interests but yours.

Majesty, the councillors say. If it please you. To look favourably, for the sake of the realm and commonweal, on the Emperor’s slavish overtures. On his whimpers and pleas.

This occupies fifteen minutes. At last, Henry says, well, if it is for the good of the commonweal, I will receive Chapuys, we will continue negotiations. I must swallow, I suppose, any personal insults I have received.