‘You are in a field,’ he says. ‘More or less. Or you soon will be. You must get on the road.’

‘But I am just off the ship!’

This is how Stephen manifests his friendship: constant complaints, carping and grumbles. He turns and issues orders: feed Vaughan, water Vaughan, bed down Vaughan, have a good horse ready to go at dawn. ‘Don’t fret, you can sleep the night. Then you must escort Chapuys up to Kimbolton. You speak the languages, Stephen! Nothing must pass in French or Spanish or Latin, but I know every word.’

‘Ah. I see.’ Stephen draws his person together.

‘Because I think that if Katherine dies, Mary will be desperate to take ship for the Emperor’s domains. He is her cousin, after all, and though she should not trust him, she cannot be convinced of that. And we can hardly chain her to the wall.’

‘Keep her up-country. Keep her where there is no port in two days’ ride.’

‘If Chapuys saw an exit for her, she would fly on the wind and set to sea in a sieve.’

‘Thomas.’ Vaughan, a grave man, lays a hand upon him. ‘What is all this agitation? It is not like you. You are afraid of being bested by a little girl?’

He would like to tell Vaughan what has passed, but how to convey the texture of it: the smoothness of Henry’s lies, the solid weight of Brandon when he shoved him, dragged him, manhandled him away from the king; the raw wetness of the wind on his face, the taste of blood in his mouth. It will always be like this, he thinks. It will go on being like this. Advent, Lent, Whitsuntide. ‘Look,’ he sighs, ‘I must go and write to Stephen Gardiner in France. If this is the end of Katherine, I must make sure he knows it from me.’

‘No more grovelling to Frenchmen for our salvation,’ Stephen says. Is that a grin? It is a wolfish one. Stephen is a merchant, and he values the Low Countries trade. When relations with the Emperor founder, England runs out of money. When the Emperor is on our side, we grow rich. ‘We can patch all the quarrels,’ Stephen says. ‘Katherine was the cause of all. Her nephew will be as relieved as we are. He never wanted to invade us. And now he has enough to do with Milan. Let him scrap with the French if he must. Our king will be free. A free hand to do as he likes.’

That is what worries me, he thinks. This free hand. He makes his apologies to Stephen. Vaughan stops him. ‘Thomas. You will wreck yourself with this pace you keep up. Do you ever consider, that half your years be spent?’

‘Half? Stephen, I am fifty.’

‘I forget.’ A little laugh. ‘Fifty already? I don’t know you have changed much since ever I knew you.’

‘That is an illusion,’ he says. ‘But I promise to take a rest, when you do.’