Give the boy this: he is not without spirit. ‘But, Master Secretary, the word about the court is, you are keeping company with the queen’s enemies.’

‘For the better to find out their practices,’ he says.

‘If I could believe that.’

He sees Richard shift on his stool, impatient.

‘These are bitter days,’ he says. ‘I do not remember such a time of tension and misery, not since the cardinal came down. In truth I do not blame you, Mark, if you find it hard to trust me, there is such ill-feeling at court that no one trusts anyone else. But I come to you because you are close to the queen, and the other gentlemen will not help me. I have the power to reward you, and will make sure you have everything you deserve, if only you can give me some window into the queen’s desires. I need to know why she is so unhappy, and what I can do to remedy it. For it is unlikely she will conceive an heir, while her mind is unquiet. And if she could do that: ah, then all our tears would be dried.’

Mark looks up. ‘Why, it is no wonder she is unhappy,’ he says. ‘She is in love.’

‘With whom?’

‘With me.’

He, Cromwell, leans forward, elbows on the table: then puts a hand up to cover his face.

‘You are amazed,’ Mark suggests.

That is only part of what he feels. I thought, he says to himself, that this would be difficult. But it is like picking flowers. He lowers his hand and beams at the boy. ‘Not so amazed as you might think. For I have watched you, and I have seen her gestures, her eloquent looks, her many indications of favour. And if these are shown in public, then what in private? And of course it is no surprise any woman would be drawn to you. You are a very handsome young man.’

‘Though we thought you were a sodomite,’ Richard says.

‘Not I, sir!’ Mark turns pink. ‘I am as good a man as any of them.’

‘So the queen would give a good account of you?’ he asks, smiling. ‘She has tried you and found you to her liking?’

The boy’s glance slides away, like a piece of silk over glass. ‘I cannot discuss it.’

‘Of course not. But we must draw our own conclusions. She is not an inexperienced woman, I think, she would not be interested in a less than masterly performance.’

‘We poor men,’ Mark says, ‘poor men born, are in no wise inferior in that way.’

‘True,’ he says. ‘Though gentlemen keep that fact from ladies, if they can.’

‘Otherwise,’ Richard says, ‘every duchess would be frolicking in a copse with a woodcutter.’

He cannot help laugh. ‘Only there are so few duchesses and so many woodcutters. There must be competition between them, you would think.’

Mark looks at him as if he is profaning a sacred mystery. ‘If you mean she has other lovers, I have never asked her, I would not ask her, but I know they are jealous of me.’