As soon as the meeting ends, he, Cromwell, is mobbed by the councillors: except for the Boleyns, who waft off in the other direction. The meeting has gone well; he has got everything he wants; Henry is back on course for a treaty with the Emperor: why then does he feel so restless, stifled? He elbows his colleagues aside, though in a mannerly fashion. He wants air. Henry passes him, he stops, he turns, he says, ‘Master Secretary. Will you walk along with me?’

They walk. In silence. It is for the prince, not the minister, to introduce a topic.

He can wait.

Henry says, ‘You know, I wish we would go down to the weald one day, as we have said, to talk to the ironmasters.’

He waits.

‘I have had various drawings, mathematical drawings, and advices concerning how our ordnance can be improved, but to be truthful, I cannot make as much of it as you would.’

More humble, he thinks. A little more humble yet.

Henry says, ‘You have been in the forest and met charcoal burners. I remember you said to me once, they be very poor men.’

He waits. Henry says, ‘One must know the process from the beginning, I think, whether one is making armour or ordnance. It is no use demanding of a metal that it has certain properties, a certain temper, unless you know how it is made, and the difficulties your craftsman may encounter. Now, I have never been too proud to sit down for an hour with the gauntlet maker, who armours my right hand. We must study, I think, every pin, every rivet.’

And? Yes?

He leaves the king to stumble on.

‘And, well. And, so. You are my right hand, sir.’

He nods. Sir. How touching.

Henry says, ‘So, to Kent, to the weald: will we go? Shall I choose a week? Two, three days should do it.’

He smiles. ‘Not this summer, sir. You will be engaged otherwise. Besides, the ironmasters are like all of us. They must have a holiday. They must lie in the sun. They must pick apples.’

Henry looks at him, mild, beseeching, from the tail of his blue eye: give me a happy summer. He says, ‘I cannot live as I have lived, Cromwell.’

He is here to take instructions. Get me Jane: Jane, so kind, who sighs across the palate like sweet butter. Deliver me from bitterness, from gall.

‘I think I might go home,’ he says. ‘If you will permit. I have much to do if I am to set this affair in train, and I feel…’ His English deserts him. This sometimes happens. ‘Un peu…’ But his French deserts him too.

‘But you are not ill? You will be back soon?’

‘I shall seek a consultation with the canon lawyers,’ he says. ‘It may take some days, you know what they are. It will go no slower than I can help. I shall speak to the archbishop.’

‘And perhaps to Harry Percy,’ Henry says. ‘You know how she…the betrothal, the whatever, the relationship between them…well, I think they were as good as married, were they not? And if that won’t run…’ He rubs his beard. ‘You know that I was, before I was with the queen, I was, on occasion, with her sister, her sister Mary, which –’