‘What?’ she says. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘Bedingfield has his orders. But he could not leave a lady in a snowdrift.’

She kisses him. ‘Thomas Cromwell. God and the Emperor will requite you.’

He nods. ‘I trust in God.’

She sweeps out. They can hear her voice raised in enquiry: ‘What are these strange mounds of snow?’

‘I hope they do not tell her,’ he says to Rafe. ‘She is a papist.’

‘One never kisses me like that,’ Christophe complains.

‘Perhaps if you washed your face,’ he says. He looks keenly at Rafe. ‘You would not have let her go.’

‘I would not,’ Rafe says stiffly. ‘The ruse would not have occurred to me. And even if it had…no, I would not, I would have been afraid to cross the king.’

‘That’s why you will thrive and live to be old.’ He shrugs. ‘She will ride. Chapuys will ride. And Stephen Vaughan will watch them both. Are you coming tomorrow morning? Bring Helen and her daughters. Not the baby, it’s too cold. We are going to have a fanfare, Gregory says, and then trample the papal court into the ground.’

‘She loved the wings,’ Rafe says. ‘Our little girl. She wants to know if she can wear them every year.’

‘I don’t see why not. Till Gregory has a daughter big enough.’

They embrace. ‘Try to sleep, sir.’

He knows Brandon’s words will go round in his head when that head touches the pillow. ‘When it comes to the affairs of nations you cannot deal, you are not fit to talk to princes.’ Useless to swear vengeance on Duke Dripping Pan. He will undo himself, and perhaps for good this time, shouting around Greenwich that Henry is a cuckold. Surely even an old favourite cannot get away with that?

Besides, Brandon’s right. A duke can represent his master at the court of a foreign king. Or a cardinal; even if he is low-born like Wolsey, his office in the church dignifies him. A bishop like Gardiner; he may be of dubious provenance, but by his office he is Stephen Winchester, incumbent of England’s richest see. But Cremuel remains a nobody. The king gives him titles that no one abroad understands, and jobs that no one at home can do. He multiplies offices, duties pile on him: plain Master Cromwell goes out at morning, plain Master Cromwell comes in at night. Henry had offered him the Lord Chancellor’s post; no, don’t disturb Lord Audley, he had said. Audley does a good job; Audley, in fact, does as he’s told. Perhaps, though, he should have agreed? He sighs, at the thought of wearing the chain. You cannot, surely, be both Lord Chancellor and Master Secretary? And he will not give up that post. It doesn’t matter if it gives him a lesser status. It doesn’t matter if the French don’t comprehend. Let them judge by results. Brandon can make a racket, unreproved, near the royal person; he can slap the king on the back and call him Harry; he can chuckle with him over ancient jests and tilt-yard escapades. But chivalry’s day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys.