It's April, and the city doesn't know yet.

The fishmongers are setting up on cheapside.

A guild apprentice is hauling water from the conduit on Cornhill, same as every morning.

Somewhere near the docks, a cart horse is being argued with.

The smell of the river is everywhere, the way it always is, the way it always has been,

a mix of mud and rot and commerce that Londoners stopped

noticing before they were old enough to even name it.

Nobody in the streets knows that the king has been dead for two days.

They don't know because a handful of people at Richmond Palace have decided that they

aren't ready to tell anybody yet.

They have their reasons, political reasons,

the kind of reasons that make sense when you're standing in a room with a cold body and a 17-year-old

air and 23 years of careful, paranoid, white-knuckled power about to transfer to someone who has

never done this before. So the city goes on about its morning. The apprentice hauls his water, the fishmongers argue over prices.

The most significant secret in England sits behind lock doors at Richmond,

while two of the most hated men in the country eat their breakfast,

not yet knowing that by Friday they'll be in the tower.

This is 1509, and almost nothing is what it looks like.

Hello, friend, and welcome back to the Renaissance English History Podcast. I am your host, Heather,

and I've been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009 with my show, which makes me the original

tutor history podcaster. I am, as always, delighted that you are here with me today to do

another year in the life episode. I do these maybe once a year or so. I pick one year and just

...