And as a lover? Alas, let's put it this way, he wasn't well endowed. Rather small like a little pig. You don't believe me? Well, I'm a man who has slept with Anne Boleyn and what she told me, between giggles, is not worth repeating, particularly if there are ladies about. My little clerk shakes his head in disbelief. I rap him across the wrist with my ash cane. Go down to the muniment room in the Tower, says I, and search out the last letter poor Anne sent to Henry whilst she lay in the Tower. She makes no bones about it then. What I really want to say is that I sometimes suspect Henry would have loved to have been a woman. He certainly liked to be pursued. He liked to simper and be coy and – no, don't think it's the time to tell you about the occasion I found him dressed in one of Anne of Cleve's gowns!) 'But Henry will give it to the Germans?' Benjamin asked.

'Yes, yes, I think he will. He's just baiting France and the Papacy.' 'But it doesn't concern us, does it?' I asked.

'No, I don't think it will,' Agrippa replied slowly. 'The Orb will be removed from the Tower – it needs re-burnishing – and then passed over to Egremont to verify that it's no forgery.'

(A wise man, Egremont, I wouldn't have trusted Henry as far as I could spit.)

'But it doesn't concern us?' I repeated, fearful lest the Great Beast invited us into his lair.

'I've told you I don't think it will,' Agrippa replied. He drummed gloved fingers on the table. 'Yet the King is a fool, he is playing with fire. The orb is no bigger than a tennis ball. It could be replicated, it could be stolen. Every footpad and counterfeit-man in London will hear of it. They'll smack their lips, narrow their eyes and speculate on what a fortune they could make.' Agrippa tapped his knife against the wine glass, the sound tinkling through the room like a fairy bell. 'There'll be trouble,' he declared. 'The Orb of Charlemagne is unlucky. Harold insisted on carrying it, and he was killed at Hastings.