“You see,” Henry says triumphantly to William Butts. “I shall tell Sir Anthony I am a better bedfellow than his wife.” He laughs. “Get me into bed,” he says to the pages.

Together they push him up onto the footstool before the bed, and then, as he sits back, they go either side of the bed; one of them has to stand on the covers to heave him up to sit upright so that he can breathe, propped by the pillows and the bolster. Gently, they lift his thick wounded leg into bed and then the other beside it. Tenderly, they drape the sheets and the blankets over him, and step back to see that he is comfortable. I have the disturbing thought that they are admiring him as if he were the enormous wax effigy of his corpse which must one day be placed on his coffin.

“Good enough,” he says shortly. “You can go.”

Doctor Butts brings the little medicine glass to the king and he swallows it in one.

“Is there anything else you need to make you more comfortable?” the doctor asks.

“New legs,” Henry says wryly.

“I wish to God I could give you them, Your Majesty.”

“I know, I know, you can leave us.”

They go out through my privy chamber, closing the door behind them. I hear the guard at the outer door of the presence chamber ground his pike on the stone floor in salute to the doctor, and then it is quiet, but for the crackle of the fire in the fireplace and the hoot of an owl, out in the dark trees of the garden. From somewhere, perhaps beyond the hawks’ mews, I can hear the distant pipe of a flute for dancing.

“What are you listening for?” the king asks me.

“I heard an ullet.”

“A what?”

I shake my head. “An owl. I meant an owl. We call them ullets in the North.”

“D’you miss your home?”

“No, I am so happy here.”