THE MAGNIFICENT STAIRCASE leading up to the King’s Guard Chamber was quiet and barely lit, only two men posted at the top; the torches in their niches showing empty spaces on the wall where paintings had been removed to Hampton Court. One of the guards at the top said we were to be taken to the Privy Council Chamber, where I had stood and sweated the week before. ‘He’s not ready yet, you can wait in the Privy Chamber. It’s empty as the King’s not in residence here.’

We were led through a series of dim rooms until we reached a large chamber. The walls were almost bare here too, everything no doubt removed to the Privy Chamber at Hampton Court. We were ordered to stand and wait, a guard staying with us. I looked at the opposite wall, and saw that it was covered from floor to ceiling by a magnificent wall painting, irremovable, for it was painted directly onto the plaster just like the Cotterstoke family portrait. I had heard of Holbein’s great mural, and now, in the dim flickering candlelight, I looked at it. The other large wall painting I had seen at Whitehall had shown the present King and his family; this one, however, was a magnificent display of dynastic power. The centrepiece was a square stone monument, covered in Latin words which I could not make out from where I stood. The old King, Henry VII, stood on a pedestal with one lean arm resting on the monument, his sharp foxy face staring out. Opposite him was a plump woman with arms folded, no doubt the King’s mother. Below her, on a lower step, stood Queen Jane Seymour. I thought again how Prince Edward resembled his mother. But it was the present King, standing below his father, who dominated the mural: the King as he had been perhaps half a dozen years ago: broad-shouldered, burly but not fat, his hand on his hip and his bull-like legs planted firmly apart, with an exaggerated codpiece jutting from the skirts of his doublet.

This image of the King had been reproduced many times and hung in countless official buildings and private halls, but the original had a life and power no copyist could imitate. It was the hard, staring, angry little blue eyes which dominated the painting, whose background was in sombre colours. Perhaps that was the whole point of the mural, to make those who were waiting to see the King feel as if he were already watching and judging them.

Nicholas stared open-mouthed at the mural and then whispered, ‘It is like looking at living people.’