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pumped-out blood.
    The fire dies, an ashy log subsiding; the cardinal, wrapped in his dreams, rises from his chair and personally kicks it. He stands looking down, twisting the rings on his fingers, lost in thought. He shakes himself and says, “Long day. Go home. Don’t dream of Yorkshiremen.”
    Thomas Cromwell is now a little over forty years old. He is a man of strong build, not tall. Various expressions are available to his face, and one is readable: an expression of stifled amusement. His hair is dark, heavy and waving, and his small eyes, which are of very strong sight, light up in conversation: so the Spanish ambassador will tell us, quite soon. It is said he knows by heart the entire New Testament in Latin, and so as a servant of the cardinal is apt—ready with a text if abbots flounder. His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything.
    He rises to leave, says, “If you did have a word with God and the sun came out, then the king could ride out with his gentlemen, and if he were not so fretted and confined then his spirits would rise, and he might not be thinking about Leviticus, and your life would be easier.”
    â€œYou only partly understand him. He enjoys theology, almost as much as he enjoys riding out.”
    He is at the door. Wolsey says, “By the way, the talk at court . . . His Grace the Duke of Norfolk is complaining that I have raised an evil spirit, and directed it to follow him about. If anyone mentions it to you . . . just deny it.”
    He stands in the doorway, smiling slowly. The cardinal smiles too, as if to say, I have saved the good wine till last. Don’t I know how to make you happy? Then the cardinal drops his head over his papers. He is a man who, in England’s service, scarcely needs to sleep; four hours will refresh him, and he will be up when Westminster’s bells have rung in another wet, smoky, lightless April day. “Good night,” he says. “God bless you, Tom.”
    Outside his people are waiting with lights to take him home. He has a house in Stepney but tonight he is going to his town house. A hand on his arm: Rafe Sadler, a slight young man with pale eyes. “How was Yorkshire?”
    Rafe’s smile flickers; the wind pulls the torch flame into a rainy blur.
    â€œI haven’t to speak of it; the cardinal fears it will give us bad dreams.”
    Rafe frowns. In all his twenty-one years he has never had bad dreams; sleeping securely under the Cromwell roof since he was seven, first at Fenchurch Street and now at the Austin Friars, he has grown up with a tidy mind, and his nighttime worries are all rational ones: thieves, loose dogs, sudden holes in the road.
    â€œThe Duke of Norfolk . . .” he says, then, “no, never mind. Who’s been asking for me while I’ve been away?”
    The damp streets are deserted; the mist is creeping from the river. The stars are stifled in damp and cloud. Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday’s unrecollected sins. Norfolk kneels, teeth chattering, beside his bed; the cardinal’s late-night pen scratches, scratches, like a rat beneath his mattress. While Rafe, by his side, gives him a digest of the office news, he formulates his denial, for whom it may concern: “His Grace the cardinal wholly rejects any imputation that he has sent an evil spirit to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk. He deprecates the suggestion in the strongest possible terms. No headless calf, no fallen angel in the shape of loll-tongued dog, no crawling pre-used