VIII

singing, broken by laughter. Mesmerised, I watch the flickering pattern of light and shade on the sill before me as the wind stirs the leaves.
    A rustling sounds close by. Silken arms slide around my neck and a kiss brushes my cheek.
    “Sweetheart.” I draw her onto my lap. She is only nineteen: the Duke of Norfolk’s niece and a dainty little thing, with velvet eyes and the softest skin. Her name is Kate Howard.
    She says, “Join us. Tom proposes a game.”
    “Does he?”
    “And you know how I like games.” She traces a finger along my jawline; looks at me: a secret look, just for the two of us.
    This is my new world: Cromwell is dead and this beautiful creature is my wife. The marriage to that German woman, the Lady Anna, happened – as it had to… but I made sure it was annulled as soon as possible. My lawyers studied the documents, and found their reasons – did she not have a precontract to marry the Duke of Lorraine’s son? And besides, witnesses heard me say I could not bring myself to take the woman in my arms, let alone put a son in her belly. Without physical union, there is no union in God’s eyes.
    Chief among those witnesses was Cromwell. I kept him alive long enough to see that the annulment was achieved. He died the same day I married Kate. There was a certain neatness in it.
    Now I kiss Kate lingeringly and haul myself up to stand. “See – I can’t resist you,” I say, and she laughs. One of the men moves my chair to a place in a loose circle they are creating in the centre of the room, made of stools and benches and cushions.
    There, I sit again, with Kate beside me, her plump hand resting in mine. As the others settle themselves in the circle, I lose myself in gazing at her: at the way the light falls on her; at the way she smiles; at the way a pearl that hangs from her ear catches on the soft frill of fine linen at her neck, swings, and catches again as she turns her head. She is covered in jewels. She asks for them as a child asks for sweetmeats and toys. She looks so pretty in them, and so pleased; I can deny her nothing.
    Our young companions are settled now: the men with their bright-coloured legs stuck out in front of them, slashed and jewelled arms slung languidly over the backs of chairs or propped on knees; the women with their skirts arranged, the pomanders and trinkets hanging from their girdles gathered into their laps.
    “Take a slip of paper and read it out,” says Anthony Denny, one of my gentleman-servants, passing round a basket. It stops at Kate first. She dips her hand in and unfolds a paper, eager and excited. She says, “It’s a question. ‘What quality would you most like the person you love to possess? And, since everyone must have some defect, what fault would you choose they should have?’”
    “Sir?” Her eyes are on me. “What would you say?”
    “Beauty, sweetness of nature.”
    “And a fault?”
    I smile. “Only that she is too innocent.”
    Culpeper, sitting on Kate’s other side, says, “That she is already married.” Oh, roguish boy; he cannot resist playing the gallant.
    It makes Kate laugh. “How can that be a fault?” she says, turning to him. “It would be the fault of the other, to have fixed his affections on a lady who is beyond his reach.”
    I say, “Quite so, my love, but how can anyone help it?” I smile at her again, and she smiles in return, and I see that her eyes are lit with adoration.
    As the discussion continues round the circle, my thoughts drift again. I think: she will give me sons, that’s certain. Look at her: her flesh seems edible – it has a sugary sheen. She’s like one of those marzipan goddesses the confectory makes for banquets. The sons she gives me will be ruddy and healthy. Edward is only three years old, and too pale. Whey-faced, like his mother. Someone said that once. Who was it?
    Now Tom Culpeper is reaching into the basket.
    “If you had to be openly mad,” he reads, “what kind of foolishness would you be thought most likely to display?”
    “Lovesickness,” Kate says, and blushes deeply.
    At that moment I am suddenly aware that, on the other side of the room, there is an interested spectator.
    The boy – the thing, the spectre – is standing against one of the curtains, staring at me. As exact and real as every other person here. He is ragged as a tramp, his skin yellow and seemingly patched with sores; he looks young and old at once, alive and dead. His hands are held, dangling,