It amazes him, the Lord Chancellor’s levity, as they pass into the open air. At the king’s landing stage, the heads of stone beasts swim in the water, and so do their own shapes, the shapes of gentlemen, their forms broken by ripples, and the everted queen, flickering like a flame in a glass: around them, the dance of mild afternoon sunshine, and a flood of birdsong. He hands Anne into the barge, as Audley seems reluctant to touch her, and she shies away from Norfolk; and as if fishing his thoughts out of his mind, she whispers, ‘Cremuel, you have never forgiven me for Wolsey.’ Fitzwilliam gives him a glance, murmurs something he does not catch. Fitz was a favourite of the cardinal’s in his day, and perhaps they are sharing a thought: now Anne Boleyn knows what it is like to be turned out of your house and put upon the river, your whole life receding with every stroke of the oars.

Norfolk takes a place opposite his niece, twitching and tutting. ‘You see? You see now, madam! You see what happens, when you spurn your own family?’

‘I do not think “spurn” is the word,’ Audley says. ‘She hardly did that.’

He gives Audley a black look. He has asked for discretion on the charges against brother George. He does not want Anne to start flailing about and knock someone out of the boat. He withdraws into himself. Watches the water. A company of halberdiers are their escort, and he admires each fine axe edge, the sharp gleam on their blades. From an armoury’s point of view, they are surprisingly cheap to produce, halberds. But probably, as a weapon of war, they’ve had their day. He thinks of Italy, the battlefield, the forward push of pike. There is a powder house at the Tower and he likes to go in and talk to the firemasters. But perhaps that is a task for another day.

Anne says, ‘Where is Charles Brandon? I am sure he is sorry not to have seen this.’

‘He is with the king, I suppose,’ Audley says. He turns to him and whispers, ‘Poisoning his mind against your friend Wyatt. You have your work cut out there, Master Secretary.’

His eyes are on the far bank. ‘Wyatt is too good a man to lose.’

The Lord Chancellor sniffs. ‘Verses will not save him. Damn him, rather. We know he writes in riddles. But I think perhaps the king will feel they have been solved.’

He thinks not. There are codes so subtle that they change their whole meaning in half a line, or in a syllable, or in a pause, a caesura. He has prided himself, will pride himself, on asking Wyatt no questions that will force him to lie, though he may dissimulate. Anne should have dissimulated, Lady Rochford has explained to him: on her first night with the king she should have acted the virgin’s part, lain rigid and weeping. ‘But, Lady Rochford,’ he had objected, ‘faced with such fear, any man might falter. The king is not a rapist.’