‘The king's business. How not?’

They must do this in a mutter, as Rowland joins the hands of bride and groom. ‘I'll tell you just once. Keep away from my family's affairs. Or you'll come off worse, Master Cromwell, than you can imagine.’

Anne is attended by only one lady, her sister. As they leave – the king towing his wife, hand on her upper arm, towards a little harp music – Mary turns and gives him a sumptuous smile. She holds up her hand, thumb and finger an inch apart.

She had always said, I will be the first to know. It will be me who lets out her bodices.

He calls William Brereton back, politely; he says, you have made a mistake in threatening me.

He goes back to his office in Westminster. He wonders, does the king know yet? Probably not.

He sits down to his drafting. They bring in candles. He sees the shadow of his own hand moving across the paper, his own unconcealable fist unmasked by velvet glove. He wants nothing between himself and the weave of the paper, the black running line of ink, so he takes off his rings, Wolsey's turquoise and Francis's ruby – at New Year, the king slid it from his own finger and gave it back to him, in the setting the Calais goldsmith had made, and said, as rulers do, in a rush of confidence, now that will be a sign between us, Cromwell, send a paper with this and I shall know it comes from your hand even if you lack your seal.

A confidant of Henry's who was standing by – it was Nicholas Carew – had remarked, His Majesty's ring fits you without adjustment. He said, so it does.

He hesitates, his quill hovering. He writes, ‘This realm of England is an Empire.’ This realm of England is an Empire, and so has been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King …

At eleven o'clock, when the day has brightened as much as it will, he eats dinner with Cranmer in his lodging at Cannon Row, where he is living till his new dignity is conferred and he can move into Lambeth Palace. He has been practising his new signature, Thomas Elect of Canterbury. Soon he will dine in state, but today, like a threadbare scholar, he shoves his papers aside while some table linen is laid and they bring in the salt fish, over which he signs a grace.

‘That won't improve it,’ he says. ‘Who's cooking for you? I'll send someone over.’

‘So, is the marriage made?’ It is like Cranmer to wait to be told: to work six hours in silent patience, head down over his books.

‘Yes, Rowland was up to his office. He didn't wed her to Norris, or the king to her sister.’ He shakes out his napkin. ‘I know a thing. But you must coax it from me.’

He is hoping that Cranmer, by way of coaxing, will impart the secret he promised in his letter, the secret written down the side of the page. But it must have been some minor indiscretion, now forgotten. And because Canterbury Elect is occupied in poking uncertainly at scales and skin, he says, ‘She, Anne, she is already having a child.’

Cranmer glances up. ‘If you tell it in that tone, people will think you take the credit yourself.’

‘Are you not astonished? Are you not pleased?’

‘I wonder what fish this purports to be?’ Cranmer says with mild interest. ‘Naturally I am delighted. But I knew it, you see, because this marriage is clean – why would not God bless it with offspring? And with an heir?’

‘Of course, with an heir. Look.’ He takes out the papers he has been working on. Cranmer washes his fishy fingers and hunches towards the candle flame. ‘So after Easter,’ he says, reading, ‘it will be against the law and the king's prerogative to make an appeal in any matter to the Pope. So there is Katherine's suit dead and buried. And I, Canterbury, can decide the king's cause in our own courts. Well, this has been long enough coming.’

He laughs. ‘You were long enough coming.’ Cranmer was in Mantua when he heard of the honour the king intended for him. He began his journey circuitously: Stephen Vaughan met him at Lyons, and hustled him over the winter roads and through the snowdrifts of Picardy to the boat. ‘Why did you delay? Doesn't every boy want to be an archbishop? Though not me, if I think back. What I wanted was my own bear.’

Cranmer looks at him, his expression speculative. ‘I'm sure that could be arranged for you.’

Gregory has asked him, how will we know when Dr Cranmer is making a joke? He has told him, you won't, they are as rare as apple blossom in January. And now, for some weeks, he will be half-fearful that a bear will turn up at his door. As they part that day, Cranmer glances up from the table and says, ‘Of course, I don't officially know.’

‘About the child?’

‘About the marriage. As I am to be judge in the matter of the king's old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that his new one has already taken place.’

‘Right,’ he says. ‘What Rowland gets up to in the early hours of the morning is a matter for himself alone.’ He leaves Cranmer with head bowed over the remains of their meal, as if studying to reassemble the fish.

As our severance from the Vatican is not yet complete, we cannot have a new archbishop unless the Pope appoints him. Delegates in Rome are empowered to say anything, promise anything, pro tem, to get Clement to agree. The king says, aghast, ‘Do you know how much the papal bulls cost, for Canterbury? And that I shall have to pay for them? And you know how much it costs to install him?’ He adds, ‘It must be done properly, of course, nothing omitted, nothing scanted.’

‘It will be the last money Your Majesty sends to Rome, if it rests with me.’

‘And do you know,’ the king says, as if he has discovered something astonishing, ‘that Cranmer has not a penny of his own? He can contribute nothing.’

He borrows the money, on the Crown's behalf, from a rich Genovese he knows called Salvago. To persuade him into the loan, he sends around to his house an engraving which he knows Sebastian covets. It shows a young man standing in a garden, his eyes turned upwards to an empty window, at which it is to be hoped very soon a lady will appear; her scent hangs already in the air, and birds on the boughs look enquiringly into the vacancy, ready to sing. In his two hands the young man holds a book; it is a book shaped like a heart.

Cranmer sits on committees every day, in back rooms at Westminster. He is writing a paper for the king, to show that even if his brother's marriage to Katherine was not consummated, it does not affect the case for the annulment, for certainly they intended to be married, and that intention creates affinity; also, in the nights they spent together, it must have been their intention to make children, even if they did not go about it the right way. In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark. Do you like the work, he enquires; looking at their hunched and dusty persons, he judges them to have the experience they need. Cranmer in his writing keeps calling the queen ‘the most serene Katherine', as if to separate her untroubled face, framed by a linen pillow, from the indignities being forced on her lower body: the boy's fumbling and scrabbling, the pawing at her thighs.

Meanwhile Anne, the hidden Queen of England, breaks free from her gentleman companions as she walks through a gallery at Whitehall; she laughs as she breaks into a trot, almost a skip, and they reach out to contain her, as if she is dangerous, but she flings their hands away from her, laughing. ‘Do you know, I have a great longing to eat apples? The king says it means I am having a baby, but I tell him no, no, it can't be that …’ She whirls around, around again. She flushes, tears bounce out of her eyes and seem to fly away from her like the waters of an unregulated fountain.

Thomas Wyatt pushes through the crowd. ‘Anne …’ He snatches at her hands, he pulls her towards him. ‘Anne, hush, sweetheart … hush …’ She collapses into hiccupping sobs, folding herself against his shoulder. Wyatt holds her fast; his eyes travel around, as if he had found himself naked in the road, and is looking for some traveller to come along with a garment to cover his shame. Among the bystanders is Chapuys; the ambassador makes a rapid, purposeful exit, his little legs working, a sneer stamped on his face.