‘Must we refight this now?’ says the cardinal.

‘– the Duke of Suffolk was only fifty miles from Paris.’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and do you know what fifty miles is, to a half-starved infantryman in winter, when he sleeps on wet ground and wakes up cold? Do you know what fifty miles is to a baggage train, with carts up to the axles in mud? And as for the glories of 1513 – God defend us.’

‘Tournai! Thérouanne!’ Gascoigne shouts. ‘Are you blind to what occurred? Two French towns taken! The king so valiant in the field!’

If we were in the field now, he thinks, I'd spit at your feet. ‘If you like the king so much, go and work for him. Or do you already?’

The cardinal clears his throat softly. ‘We all do,’ Cavendish says, and the cardinal says, ‘Thomas, we are the works of his hand.’

When they get out to the cardinal's barge his flags are flying: the Tudor rose, the Cornish choughs. Cavendish says, wide-eyed, ‘Look at all these little boats, waffeting up and down.’ For a moment, the cardinal thinks the Londoners have turned out to wish him well. But as he enters the barge, there are sounds of hooting and booing from the boats; spectators crowd the bank, and though the cardinal's men keep them back, their intent is clear enough. When the oars begin to row upstream, and not downstream to the Tower, there are groans and shouted threats.

It is then that the cardinal collapses, falling into his seat, beginning to talk, and talks, talks, talks, all the way to Putney. ‘Do they hate me so much? What have I done but promote their trades and show them my goodwill? Have I sown hatred? No. Persecuted none. Sought remedies every year when wheat was scarce. When the apprentices rioted, begged the king on my knees with tears in my eyes to spare the offenders, while they stood garlanded with the nooses that were to hang them.’

‘The multitude,’ Cavendish says, ‘is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down – for the novelty of the thing.’

‘Fifteen years Chancellor. Twenty in his service. His father's before that. Never spared myself … rising early, watching late …’

‘There, you see,’ Cavendish says, ‘what it is to serve a prince! We should be wary of their vacillations of temper.’

‘Princes are not obliged to consistency,’ he says. He thinks, I may forget myself, lean across and push you overboard.

The cardinal has not forgotten himself, far from it; he is looking back, back twenty years to the young king's accession. ‘Put him to work, said some. But I said, no, he is a young man. Let him hunt, joust, and fly his hawks and falcons …’

‘Play instruments,’ Cavendish says. ‘Always plucking at something or other. And singing.’

‘You make him sound like Nero.’

‘Nero?’ Cavendish jumps. ‘I never said so.’

‘The gentlest, wisest prince in Christendom,’ says the cardinal. ‘I will not hear a word against him from any man.’

‘Nor shall you,’ he says.

‘But what I would do for him! Cross the Channel as lightly as a man might step across a stream of piss in the street.’ The cardinal shakes his head. ‘Waking and sleeping, on horseback or at my beads … twenty years …’

‘Is it something to do with the English?’ Cavendish asks earnestly. He's still thinking of the uproar back there when they embarked; and even now, people are running along the banks, making obscene signs and whistling. ‘Tell us, Master Cromwell, you've been abroad. Are they particularly an ungrateful nation? It seems to me that they like change for the sake of it.’

‘I don't think it's the English. I think it's just people. They always hope there may be something better.’

‘But what do they get by the change?’ Cavendish persists. ‘One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who bites nearer the bone. Out goes the man grown fat with honour, and in comes a hungry and a lean man.’

He closes his eyes. The river shifts beneath them, dim figures in an allegory of Fortune. Decayed Magnificence sits in the centre. Cavendish, leaning at his right like a Virtuous Councillor, mutters words of superfluous and belated advice, to which the sorry magnate inclines his head; he, like a Tempter, is seated on the left, and the cardinal's great hand, with its knuckles of garnet and tourmaline, grips his own hand painfully. George would certainly go in the river, except that what he's saying, despite the platitudes, makes a bleak sense. And why? Stephen Gardiner, he thinks. It may not be proper to call the cardinal a dog grown fat, but Stephen is definitely hungry and lean, and has been promoted by the king to a place as his own private secretary. It is not unusual for the cardinal's staff to transfer in this way, after careful nurture in the Wolsey school of craft and diligence; but still, this places Stephen as the man who – if he manages his duties properly – may be closer than anyone to the king, except perhaps for the gentleman who attends him at his close-stool and hands him a diaper cloth. I wouldn't so much mind, he thinks, if Stephen got that job.

The cardinal closes his eyes. Tears are seeping from beneath his lids. ‘For it is a truth,’ says Cavendish, ‘that fortune is inconstant, fickle and mutable …’

All he has to do is to make a strangling motion, quickly, while the cardinal has his eyes shut. Cavendish, putting a hand to his throat, takes the point. And then they look at each other, sheepish. One of them has said too much; one of them has felt too much. It is not easy to know where the balance rests. His eyes scan the banks of the Thames. Still, the cardinal weeps and grips his hand.

As they move upriver, the littoral ceases to alarm. It is not because, in Putney, Englishmen are less fickle. It's just that they haven't heard yet.

The horses are waiting. The cardinal, in his capacity as a churchman, has always ridden a large strong mule; though, since he has hunted with kings for twenty years, his stable is the envy of every nobleman. Here the beast stands, twitching long ears, in its usual scarlet trappings, and by him Master Sexton, the cardinal's fool.

‘What in God's name is he doing here?’ he asks Cavendish.

Sexton comes forward and says something in the cardinal's ear; the cardinal laughs. ‘Very good, Patch. Now, help me mount, there's a good fellow.’

But Patch – Master Sexton – is not up to the job. The cardinal seems weakened; he seems to feel the weight of his flesh hanging on his bones. He, Cromwell, slides from his saddle, nods to three of the stouter servants. ‘Master Patch, hold Christopher's head.’ When Patch pretends not to know that Christopher is the mule, and puts a headlock on the man next to him, he says, oh for Jesus' sake, Sexton, get out of the way, or I'll stuff you in a sack and drown you.

The man who's nearly had his head pulled off stands up, rubs his neck; says, thanks Master Cromwell, and hobbles forward to hold the bridle. He, Cromwell, with two others, hauls the cardinal into the saddle. The cardinal looks shamefaced. ‘Thank you, Tom.’ He laughs shakily. ‘That's you told, Patch.’

They are ready to ride. Cavendish looks up. ‘Saints protect us!’ A single horseman is heading downhill at a gallop. ‘An arrest!’

‘By one man?’

‘An outrider,’ says Cavendish, and he says, Putney's rough but you don't have to send out scouts. Then someone shouts, ‘It's Harry Norris.’ Harry throws himself from his mount. Whatever he's come to do, he's in a lather about it. Harry Norris is one of the king's closest friends; he is, to be exact, the Groom of the Stool, the man who hands the diaper cloth.

Wolsey sees, immediately, that the king wouldn't send Norris to take him into custody. ‘Now, Sir Henry, get your breath back. What can be so urgent?’

Norris says, beg pardon, my lord, my lord cardinal, sweeps off his feathered cap, wipes his face with his arm, smiles in his most engaging fashion. He speaks to the cardinal gracefully: the king has commanded him to ride after His Grace and overtake him, and speak words of comfort to him and give him this ring, which he knows well – a ring which he holds out, in the palm of his glove.