" Rumours crop in the short summer nights. Dawn finds them like mushrooms in the damp grass. Members of Thomas Cromwell's household have been seeking a midwife in the small hours of the morning. He is hiding a woman at some country house of his, a foreign woman who has given him a daughter. Whatever you do, he says to Rafe, don't defend my honour. I have women like that all over the place. They will believe it, Rafe says. The word in the city is that Thomas Cromwell has a prodigious… Memory, he says. I have a very large ledger. A huge filing system, in which are recorded (under their name, and also under their offence) the details of people who have cut across me. "