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second wife. As he had put it, ‘My lord of Winchester, a considered statement on the king’s supremacy might be welcome, just so that there can be no mistake about your loyalty. A firm declaration that he is head of the English church and, rightfully considered, always has been. An assertion, firmly stated, that the Pope is a foreign prince with no jurisdiction here. A written sermon, perhaps, or an open letter. To clear up any ambiguities in your opinions. To give a lead to other churchmen, and to disabuse ambassador Chapuys of the notion that you have been bought by the Emperor. You should make a statement to the whole of Christendom. In fact, why don’t you go back to your diocese and write a book?’
    Now here is Gardiner, patting a manuscript as if it were the cheek of a plump baby: ‘The king will be pleased to read this. I have called it, Of True Obedience .’
    ‘You had better let me see it before it goes to the printer.’
    ‘The king himself will expound it to you. It shows why oaths to the papacy are of none effect, yet our oath to the king, as head of the church, is good. It emphasises most strongly that a king’s authority is divine, and descends to him directly from God.’
    ‘And not from a pope.’
    ‘In no wise from a pope; it descends from God without intermediary, and it does not flow upwards from his subjects, as you once stated to him.’
    ‘Did I? Flow upwards? There seems a difficulty there.’
    ‘You brought the king a book to that effect, the book of Marsiglio of Padua, his forty-two articles. The king says you belaboured him with them till his head ached.’
    ‘I should have made the matter shorter,’ he says, smiling. ‘In practice, Stephen, upwards, downwards – it hardly matters. “Where the word of a king is, there is power, and who may say to him, what doest thou?”’
    ‘Henry is not a tyrant,’ Gardiner says stiffly. ‘I rebut any notion that his regime is not lawfully grounded. If I were king, I would wish my authority to be legitimate wholly, to be respected universally and, if questioned, stoutly defended. Would not you?’
    ‘If I were king…’
    He was going to say, if I were king I’d defenestrate you. Gardiner says, ‘Why are you looking out of the window?’
    He smiles absently. ‘I wonder what Thomas More would say to your book?’
    ‘Oh, he would much mislike it, but for his opinion I do not give a fig,’ the bishop says heartily, ‘since his brain was eaten out by kites, and his skull made a relic his daughter worships on her knees. Why did you let her take the head off London Bridge?’
    ‘You know me, Stephen. The fluid of benevolence flows through my veins and sometimes overspills. But look, if you are so proud of your book, perhaps you should spend more time writing in the country?’
    Gardiner scowls. ‘You should write a book yourself. That would be something to see. You with your dog Latin and your little bit of Greek.’
    ‘I would write it in English,’ he says. ‘A good language for all sorts of matters. Go in, Stephen, don’t keep the king waiting. You will find him in a good humour. Harry Norris is with him today. Francis Weston.’
    ‘Oh, that chattering coxcomb,’ Stephen says. He makes a cuffing motion. ‘Thank you for the intelligence.’
    Does the phantom-self of Weston feel the slap? A gust of laughter sweeps out from Henry’s rooms.
     
     
    The fine weather did not much outlast their stay at Wolf Hall. They had hardly left the Savernake forest when they were enveloped in wet mist. In England it’s been raining, more or less, for a decade, and the harvest will be poor again. The price of wheat is forecast to rise to twenty shillings a quarter. So what will the labourer do this winter, the man who earns five or six pence a day? The profiteers have moved in already, not just on the Isle of Thanet, but through the shires. His men are on their tail.
    It used to surprise the cardinal, that one Englishman would starve another and