I never did but Scawsby had not seen the last of me. Benjamin intrigued me, though he never discussed his early life.

'A closed book, Roger.' He smiled.

'Why haven't you married?' I asked. 'Don't you like women?'

'Passing fancies, my dear Roger,' he replied, and remained assiduous in his pursuit of his duties, even persuading me to join the choir at the local church, my bass an excellent foil to his tenor. I lustily bawled out the hymns whilst watching the heaving breasts of our female companions. Since then I've always had a soft spot for choirs.

At first, life was plain sailing. I kept my head down, doing the occasional errand, staying away from those areas where the powerful Scawsby family had a measure of influence. I feared for my master but one thing I had forgotten though Scawsby knew it well: Benjamin was a nephew of the great Lord Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Bluff Hal's principal minister. Now the Lord Cardinal was a hard man, not known for his generosity. A butcher's son from Ipswich, he had not forgotten his obscure beginnings but was equally determined that none of his relatives should remind him of them. When the rest of his large family came begging for favours, they were whipped off like a pack of hounds but Benjamin, the son of his favourite aunt, was cossetted and protected. My Lord Cardinal was determined that if he could be saved from the shambles of Ipswich and rise to be a royal favourite, Archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor and a Cardinal of the Roman Church, so could Benjamin.

Well, we all know about Wolsey. I was there when he died, in the Cathedral House at Lincoln, his great, fat fingers scrabbling at the bed clothes as he whispered, 'Roger, Roger, if I had served my God as well as I have served my King, he would not leave me to die like this!'