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support you, and in addition you are King of England. But.” He shakes his head. “But! If only he wanted something simple. The Philosopher’s Stone. The elixir of youth. One of those chests that occur in stories, full of gold pieces.”
    â€œAnd when you take some out, it just fills up again?”
    â€œExactly. Now the chest of gold I have hopes of, and the elixir, all the rest. But where shall I begin looking for a son to rule his country after him?”
    Behind the cardinal, moving a little in the draft, King Solomon bows, his face obscured. The Queen of Sheba—smiling, light-footed—reminds him of the young widow he lodged with when he lived in Antwerp. Since they had shared a bed, should he have married her? In honor, yes. But if he had married Anselma he couldn’t have married Liz; and his children would be different children from the ones he has now.
    â€œIf you cannot find him a son,” he says, “you must find him a piece of scripture. To ease his mind.”
    The cardinal appears to be looking for it, on his desk. “Well, Deuteronomy. Which positively recommends that a man should marry his deceased brother’s wife. As he did.” The cardinal sighs. “But he doesn’t like Deuteronomy.”
    Useless to say, why not? Useless to suggest that, if Deuteronomy orders you to marry your brother’s relict, and Leviticus says don’t, or you will not breed, you should try to live with the contradiction, and accept that the question of which takes priority was thrashed out in Rome, for a fat fee, by leading prelates, twenty years ago when the dispensations were issued, and delivered under papal seal.
    â€œI don’t see why he takes Leviticus to heart. He has a daughter living.”
    â€œBut I think it is generally understood, in the scriptures, that ‘children’ means ‘sons.’ ”
    The cardinal justifies the text, referring to the Hebrew; his voice is mild, lulling. He loves to instruct, where there is the will to be instructed. They have known each other some years now, and though the cardinal is very grand, formality has faded between them. “I have a son,” he says. “You know that, of course. God forgive me. A weakness of the flesh.”
    The cardinal’s son—Thomas Winter, they call him—seems inclined to scholarship and a quiet life, though his father may have other ideas. The cardinal has a daughter too, a young girl whom no one has seen. Rather pointedly, he has called her Dorothea, the gift of God; she is already placed in a convent, where she will pray for her parents.
    â€œAnd you have a son,” the cardinal says. “Or should I say, you have one son you give your name to. But I suspect there are some you don’t know, running around on the banks of the Thames?”
    â€œI hope not. I wasn’t fifteen when I ran away.”
    It amuses Wolsey that he doesn’t know his age. The cardinal peers down through the layers of society, to a stratum well below his own, as the butcher’s beef-fed son; to a place where his servant is born, on a day unknown, in deep obscurity. His father was no doubt drunk at his birth; his mother, understandably, was preoccupied. Kat has assigned him a date; he is grateful for it.
    â€œWell, fifteen . . .” the cardinal says. “But at fifteen I suppose you could do it? I know I could. Now I have a son, your boatman on the river has a son, your beggar on the street has a son, your would-be murderers in Yorkshire no doubt have sons who will be sworn to pursue you in the next generation, and you yourself, as we have agreed, have spawned a whole tribe of riverine brawlers—but the king, alone, has no son. Whose fault is that?”
    â€œGod’s?”
    â€œNearer than God?”
    â€œThe queen?”
    â€œMore responsible for everything than the queen?”
    He can’t help a broad smile. “Yourself, Your