It is a long moment. He feels himself on the edge of something unwelcome: superfluous knowledge, useless information. He turns, hesitates, and reaches out, tentative…

But then she raises her hands and clasps them at her breast, in the gesture Lady Rochford had showed him. Ah, Queen Esther, he thinks. She is not innocent; she can only mimic innocence. His hand drops to his side. He turns away. He knows her for a woman without remorse. He believes she would commit any sin or crime. He believes she is her father’s daughter, that never since childhood has she taken any action, coaxed or coerced, that might damage her own interests. But in one gesture, she has damaged them now.

She has seen his face change. She steps back, puts her hands around her throat: like a strangler she closes them around her own flesh. ‘I have only a little neck,’ she says. ‘It will be the work of a moment.’

Kingston hurries out to meet him; he wants to talk. ‘She keeps doing that. Her hands around her neck. And laughing.’ His honest gaoler’s face is dismayed. ‘I cannot see that it is any occasion for laughter. And there are other foolish sayings, which my wife has reported. She says, it will not stop raining till I am released. Or start raining. Or something.’

He casts a glance at the window and he sees only a summer shower. In a moment the sun will scorch the moisture from the stones. ‘My wife tells her,’ Kingston says, ‘to leave off such foolish talk. She said to me, Master Kingston, shall I have justice? I said to her, madam, the poorest subject of the king has justice. But she just laughs,’ Kingston says. ‘And she orders her dinner. And she eats it with a good appetite. And she says verses. My wife cannot follow them. The queen says they are verses of Wyatt’s. And she says, Oh, Wyatt, Thomas Wyatt, when shall I see you here with me?’

At Whitehall he hears Wyatt’s voice and walks towards it, attendants wheeling after him; he has more attendants than ever he did, some of them people he has never seen before. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon big as a house: he is blocking Wyatt’s path, and they are yelling at one another. ‘What are you doing?’ he shouts, and Wyatt breaks off and says over his shoulder, ‘Making peace.’

He laughs. Brandon stumps away, grinning behind his vast beard. Wyatt says, ‘I have begged him, set aside your old enmity for me, or it will kill me, do you want that?’ He looks after the duke with disgust. ‘I suspect he does. This is his chance. He went to Henry long ago, blustering that he had suspicions of me with Anne.’

‘Yes, but if you recall, Henry kicked him back to the east country.’

‘Henry will listen now. He will find him easy to believe.’

He takes Wyatt by the arm. If he can move Charles Brandon, he can move anybody. ‘I am not going to dispute in a public place. I sent for you to come to my house, you fool, not to go raging about in public view and making people say, What, Wyatt, is he still at large?’