Outside waiting for him, George Boleyn’s wife: her confiding hand, drawing him aside, her whisper. If someone said to Lady Rochford, ‘It’s raining,’ she would turn it into a conspiracy; as she passed the news on, she would make it sound somehow indecent, unlikely, but sadly true.

‘Well?’ he says. ‘Is she?’

‘Ah. Has she said nothing still? Of course, the wise woman says nothing till she feels it quickening.’ He regards her: stony-eyed. ‘Yes,’ she says at last, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. ‘She has been wrong before. But yes.’

‘Does the king know?’

‘You should tell him, Cromwell. Be the man with good news. Who knows, he might knight you on the spot.’

He is thinking, fetch me Rafe Sadler, fetch me Thomas Wriothesley, send a letter to Edward Seymour, whistle up my nephew Richard, cancel supper with Chapuys, but don’t let our dishes go to waste: let’s invite Sir Thomas Boleyn.

‘I suppose it is to be expected,’ Jane Rochford says. ‘She was with the king for much of the summer, was she not? A week here, a week there. And when he was not with her, he would write her love letters, and send them by the hand of Harry Norris.’

‘My lady, I must leave you, I have business.’

‘I’m sure you have. Ah well. And you are usually such a good listener. You always attend to what I say. And I say that this summer he wrote her love letters, and sent them by the hand of Harry Norris.’

He is moving too fast to make much of her last sentence; though, as he will admit later, the detail will affix itself and adhere to certain sentences of his own, not yet formed. Phrases only. Elliptic. Conditional. As everything is conditional now. Anne blossoming as Katherine fails. He pictures them, their faces intent and skirts bunched, two little girls in a muddy track, playing teeter-totter with a plank balanced on a stone.

Thomas Seymour says at once, ‘This is Jane’s chance, now. He will hesitate no more, he will want a new bedfellow. He will not touch the queen till she gives birth. He cannot. There is too much to lose.’

He thinks, already perhaps the secret king of England has fingers, has a face. But I thought that before, he reminds himself. At her coronation, when Anne carried her belly so proudly; and after all, it was only a girl.

‘I still don’t see it,’ says old Sir John, the adulterer. ‘I don’t see how he’d want Jane. Now if it were my daughter Bess. The king has danced with her. He liked her very well.’

‘Bess is married,’ Edward says.

Tom Seymour laughs. ‘The more fit for his purpose.’

Edward is irate. ‘Don’t talk of Bess. Bess would not have him. Bess is not in question.’

‘It could turn to good,’ Sir John says, tentative. ‘For until now Jane’s never been any use to us.’

‘True,’ Edward says. ‘Jane is as much use as a blancmange. Now let her earn her keep. The king will need a companion. But we do not push her in his way. Let it be as Cromwell here has advised. Henry has seen her. He has formed his intent. Now she must avoid him. No, she must repel him.’