‘Yes, yes,’ I replied irritably. ‘Just harried by business. There is no peace under the sun.’ Regretting my snappishness, I gave him a half-groat on his way out, before returning to the dining chamber, where Guy was picking at Agnes’s fine marchpane.

‘I am sorry, Guy, some urgent business.’

He smiled. ‘I, too, have had my meals interrupted when a crisis overtakes some poor patient.’

‘And I am sorry if I spoke roughly before. But what I saw this morning unmanned me.’

‘I understand. But if you think all those who oppose reform – or those of us who, yes, would have England back in the bosom of the Roman family – support such things you do us great injustice.’

‘All I know is that I hear thunder rolling all around the throne,’ I said, paraphrasing Wyatt’s poem. I then remembered again Philip Coleswyn’s words at the burning and shuddered. Any of us may come to this now.

EARLY NEXT MORNING Timothy saddled Genesis and I rode down to Chancery Lane. My horse was getting older; round in body, his head growing bony. It was another pleasant July day; hot but with a gentle cooling breeze stirring the green branches. I passed the Lincoln’s Inn gatehouse and rode on to Fleet Street, moving to the side of the road as a flock of sheep was driven into London for slaughter at the Shambles.

Already the city was busy, the shops open and the owners’ apprentices standing in doorways calling their wares. Peddlers with their trays thronged the dusty way, a rat-catcher in a wadmol smock walked nearby, stooped under the weight of two cages hung from a pole carried across his shoulders, each one full of sleek black rats. A woman with a basket on her head called out, ‘Hot pudding pies!’ I saw a sheet of paper pasted to a wall printed with the long list of books forbidden under the King’s recent proclamation, which must be surrendered by the 9th of August. Someone had scrawled ‘The word of God is the glory of Christ’ across it.

As I reached the Strand the road became quieter. The way bent south towards Westminster, following the curve of the river. To the left stood the grand three- and four-storeyed houses of the wealthy; the facades brightly painted and decorated, liveried guards at the doorways. I passed the great stone Charing Cross, then turned down into the broad street of Whitehall. Already I could see the tall buildings of the palace ahead, turreted and battlemented, every pinnacle topped with lions and unicorns and the royal arms, gilded so they flashed in the sun like hundreds of mirrors, the brightness making me blink.