‘Do you, Call-Me? Then come in from the wind,’ he says, ‘and have a cup of this wine Lord Lisle sends me from France. I do usually keep it for my own drinking.’

Call-Me takes the glass. ‘I smell burning buildings,’ he says. ‘Fallen towers. Indeed there is nothing but ash. Wreckage.’

‘But it’s useful wreckage, isn’t it?’ Wreckage can be fashioned into all sorts of things: ask any dweller on the sea shore.

‘You have not properly answered on one point,’ Wriothesley says. ‘Why did you let Wyatt go untried? Other than because he is your friend?’

‘I see you do not rate friendship highly.’ He watches Wriothesley take that in.

‘Even so,’ Call-Me says. ‘Wyatt I see poses you no threat, nor has he slighted or offended you. William Brereton, he was high-handed and offended many, he was in your way. Harry Norris, young Weston, well, there are gaps where they stood, and you can put your own friends in the privy chamber alongside Rafe. And Mark, that squib of a boy with his lute; I grant you, the place looks tidier without him. And George Rochford struck down, that sends the rest of the Boleyns scurrying away, Monseigneur will have to scuttle back to the country and sing small. The Emperor will be gratified by all that has passed. It is a pity the ambassador’s fever kept him away today. He would like to have seen it.’

No he would not, he thinks. Chapuys is squeamish. But you ought to get up from your sickbed if you need to, and see the results you have willed.

‘Now we shall have peace in England,’ Wriothesley says.

A phrase runs through his head – was it Thomas More’s? – ‘the peace of the hen coop when the fox has run home’. He sees the scattered carcasses, some killed with one snap of the jaw, the rest bitten and shredded as the fox whirls and snaps in panic as the hens flap about him, as he spins around and deals death: the remnants then to be sluiced away, the mulch of scarlet feathers plastered over the floor and walls.

‘All the players gone,’ Wriothesley says. ‘All four who carried the cardinal to Hell; and also the poor fool Mark who made a ballad of their exploits.’

‘All four,’ he says. ‘All five.’

‘A gentleman asked me, if this is what Cromwell does to the cardinal’s lesser enemies, what will he do by and by to the king himself?’

He stands looking down into the darkening garden: transfixed, the question like a knife between his shoulderblades. There is only one man among all the king’s subjects to whom that question would occur, only one who would dare pose it. There is only one man who would dare question the loyalty he shows to his king, the loyalty he demonstrates daily. ‘So…’ he says at last. ‘Stephen Gardiner calls himself a gentleman.’

Perhaps, caught in the little panes which distort and cloud, Wriothesley sees a dubious image: confusion, fear, emotions that do not often mark Master Secretary’s face. Because if Gardiner thinks this, who else? Who else will think it in the months and years ahead? He says, ‘Wriothesley, surely you don’t expect me to justify my actions to you? Once you have chosen a course, you should not apologise for it. God knows, I mean nothing but good to our master the king. I am bound to obey and serve. And if you watch me closely you will see me do it.’