Anne shoots out of her chair. ‘What, so he can intrigue with her more conveniently?’

‘Her doctors suggest, madam, that she will soon be in her grave, and not able to work you any displeasure.’

‘She would come out of it, flapping in her shroud, if she saw the chance to thwart me.’

Henry stretches out a hand: ‘Sweetheart, Chapuys has never acknowledged you. But when Katherine is gone, and can no longer make trouble for us, I will make sure he bends his knee.’

‘Nevertheless, I do not think he should go out of London. He encourages Katherine in her perversity, and she encourages her daughter.’ She darts a glance at him. ‘Cremuel, you agree, do you not? Mary should be brought to court and made to kneel before her father and swear the oath, and there on her knees she should beg pardon for her treasonous obstinacy, and acknowledge that my daughter, and not she, is heir to England.’

He indicates the plans. ‘Not building, sir?’

Henry looks like a child caught with its fingers in the sugar box. He pushes one of the batons towards him. The designs, still novel to the English eye, are those he grew accustomed to in Italy: fluted urns and vases, mantled and winged, and the sightless heads of emperors and gods. These days the native flowers and trees, the winding stems and blossoms, are disdained for wreathed arms, for the laurels of victory, the shaft of the lictor’s axe, the shaft of the spear. He sees that Anne’s status is not served by simplicity; for more than seven years now, Henry has been adapting his taste to hers. Henry used to enjoy hedge wines, the fruits of the English summer, but now the wines he favours are heavy, perfumed, drowsy; his body is heavy, so sometimes he seems to block out the light. ‘Are we building from the foundations?’ he enquires. ‘Or just a layer of ornamentation? Both cost money.’

‘How ungracious you are,’ Anne says. ‘The king is sending you some oak for your own building at Hackney. And some for Master Sadler, for his new house.’

With a dip of his head he signals his thanks. But the king’s mind is up-country, with the woman who still claims to be his wife. ‘What use is Katherine’s life to her, now?’ Henry asks. ‘I am sure she is tired of contention. God knows, I am tired of it. She were better to join the saints and holy martyrs.’

‘They have waited for her long enough.’ Anne laughs: too loudly.

‘I picture the lady dying,’ the king says. ‘She will be making speeches and forgiving me. She is always forgiving me. It is she who needs forgiveness. For her blighted womb. For poisoning my children before they were born.’

He, Cromwell, flits his eyes to Anne. Surely now, if she has anything to tell, is the moment? But she turns away, leans down and scoops her spaniel Purkoy into her lap. She buries her face in his fur, and the little dog, startled from his sleep, whimpers and twists in her hands and watches Master Secretary bow himself out.