I looked at young Cecil: clever, always coolly in control, with more than a touch of unscrupulousness, I suspected. But nonetheless he had nailed his flag unhesitatingly to the Queen’s mast. He gave a heavy sigh and I realized that he, too, must be feeling the strain of all this. I wondered whether he also felt afraid now when he smelled smoke. ‘What happens next?’ I asked him gently.

‘It is in Lord Parr’s hands, and mine, for now, I think. Watching the docks, trying to find this man with half an ear, and solving the mystery of Bertano.’

He touched my arm, an unexpected gesture. ‘We are grateful to you, Master Shardlake. That talk clarified much – ’ He broke off. ‘Ah, see. Down there.’

I looked into the courtyard. Two men had entered and were walking across it, talking amiably. The two young layabouts who were already there stopped leaning on the wall and bowed deeply to them. One was the Queen’s brother, William Parr, Earl of Essex, tall and thin with his gaunt face and trim auburn beard. The other was the man I had heard the Queen’s ladies speaking of as being back in England, a man whom the Queen had once loved and whom I despised: Sir Thomas Seymour. He wore a short green robe, with white silk hose showing off his shapely legs, and a wide flat cap with a swan feather on his coppery head. With one hand he was stroking his dark auburn beard, which was long like Paget’s, but combed to silky smoothness.

‘The Parr–Seymour alliance in action,’ Cecil whispered, with the keen interest of a connoisseur of politics. ‘The two main reformist families meet.’

‘Is not Sir Thomas too headstrong for a senior position?’

‘Yes indeed. But for now his brother Lord Hertford is abroad, and Sir Thomas keeps the flag flying. Lord Hertford returns very soon, though. I have contacts in his household.’ Cecil looked at me with a quick, vain little smile, then bowed. ‘I will leave you now, sir. You will be summoned when there is further news. Thank you again.’

I watched him walk away down the corridor, with his quick, confident steps. That smile made me think: Cecil, too, would one day make a politician; already he had his foot on the first rung of the ladder. I wondered about the alliance between the Parrs and the Seymours. For now, they were united against the religious conservatives. But when the King died both families would have separate claims to govern the realm in the name of the boy Edward: the Parrs as the family of his stepmother, the Seymours as that of his dead true mother. And how long, then, would the alliance last?

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-seven