The Taming of the Queen

GREENWICH PALACE, SUMMER 1546

The ritual of the court moves on, and I – who once led it boldly – am trapped inside it, going through my paces like a blinkered horse, allowed only to run the length of the tilt rail, blinded to the world outside my narrow, frightened view. We transfer to Greenwich for the pleasure of the gardens in the summer weather, but the king hardly emerges from his rooms. The roses bloom in the arbours and he does not smell their scent, heavy on the evening air. The court flirts and plays and competes in little games and he does not bellow advice nor award prizes. There is boating and fishing, riding at the quintain, racing and dancing. I have to appear at every pastime, smile on every winner and maintain the normal life of the court, running in its agreed course. But at the same time I know that people are whispering that the king is ill, and does not want me at his side. That he is an old man struggling with illness and pain but everyone can see his young wife watching the tennis, or the archery, or boating on the river.

My physician comes to see me as I am looking at my birds. Two pairs of canaries have nested and one cage has a row of adorable chicks, opening their beaks in unison, stretching their stubby pale wings. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I say irritably. ‘I didn’t send for you. I am perfectly well. You will have been seen coming here, please make sure that you tell everyone that I am perfectly well and that I didn’t send for you.’

‘I know you didn’t, Your Majesty,’ Doctor Robert Huicke says humbly. ‘It is I who needs to see you. I can see that you are in your full health and beauty.’

‘What is it?’ I ask, closing the cage door and turning from the birds.

‘It is my brother,’ he says.

At once I am alert. Doctor Huicke’s brother is a known reformer and scholar. He has attended the sermons at my rooms, has sent me books from London for my studies. ‘William?’

‘He has been arrested. It was an order from the Privy Council naming him, him alone, not the other scholars that he studies with. None of his circle. Just him.’

‘I am sorry to hear it.’

My blue parrot sidles along his perch as if to listen. I offer him a seed and he takes it in claw and beak, positioning it so that he can crush it and eat the kernel. He drops the husk on the ground and looks at me with his bright intelligent eyes.

‘They asked him about your opinions, Your Majesty. They asked him what authors you cite, what books he has seen in your rooms, who else attends the sermons. They searched his rooms for anything written by you. They suspect him of taking your papers to a publisher. I think they may be building a case against you.’

I shiver as if I am cold despite the warm summer sunshine. ‘I am afraid you are right, Doctor.’

‘Can you speak to the king in favour of my brother, Your Majesty? You know he is no heretic. He has thoughts about religion, but he would never undermine the king’s settlement.’

‘I will speak if I can,’ I say carefully. ‘But you see for yourself that I am not influential at the moment. Stephen Gardiner and his friends the Duke of Norfolk, William Paget and Lord Wriothesley, who were my friends, are working against the new learning, and they are in the ascendancy. This time, while the king is in such pain, it is they who are admitted to his rooms. They are his advisors, not me.’

‘I will speak to Doctor Wendy,’ he says. ‘Sometimes he consults with me about the king’s health. He might mention my brother’s name to the king and ask him for a pardon, if they charge him.’

‘Perhaps all these interrogations and inquiries are just to frighten us,’ I say. ‘Perhaps the good bishop just wants to warn us all.’

The parrot dips up and down as if he is dancing. I recognise that he is hoping for more seeds and I carefully hand him another. He takes it daintily, turning it round with his black tongue and beak as Doctor Huicke continues quietly: ‘I wish that were so. You haven’t heard about Johanne Bette?’

I shake my head.

‘He is one of my congregation, the brother of one of your yeomen. And the Worley brothers, Richard and John, have been taken from your household, too, for questioning. God have mercy on poor Johanne – he has been condemned to death. If this is a warning it is written in the blackest of ink and addressed to you. It is your men that they are questioning, Your Majesty. It is your man who will have to climb the scaffold.’

From the darkened royal rooms comes an announcement: the king is ill again. The fever mounting from his wounded leg burns in his brain and enters every joint of his aching body. Doctor Wendy is in and out of his chambers, trying one remedy after another; the doors are shut to almost everyone else. We hear that they are cupping him, draining the blood from the great bloated body, tapping the wound, grinding gold pieces into it and then washing them out with jugs of lemon juice. The king moans with pain and they station guards to keep people out of the great presence chamber and the gallery beyond, so that no-one shall hear him sob in agony. He does not ask for me, he does not even reply to my messages wishing him well, and I don’t dare to enter without invitation.

Nan says nothing, but I know that she is remembering when the king locked himself away from Katherine Howard as they went through her little letters and her household accounts looking for a payment or a gift for Thomas Culpepper. Now, as then, the king hides in his rooms, watching, and listening, but never giving himself away.

Some days I wake in the morning certain that today they will come for me, and I will go in my royal barge, my new royal barge, which has given me such foolish pleasure, upriver to the Tower. I will enter through the watergate on the swelling tide, and they will take me, not to the royal rooms, but to the ones that overlook the green, where the prisoners are held. A few days later and I will watch from the barred window as they build a wooden scaffold and know that it is for me. A confessor will come in and tell me that I must prepare myself for death.

On these days I don’t know how to get out of bed. Nan and the maids dress me as if I were a cold doll with a set face. I go through the motions of queenship, attending chapel, dining before the court, walking by the river and throwing a ball for little Rig, watching the court at play, but my face is stiff and my eyes are glassy. I think that if the day comes that there is a knock on my door I will shame myself. I will never find the courage to climb the ladder to the scaffold. I will never be able to speak as Anne Boleyn spoke. My legs will fail and they will have to push me up the steps, as they did to Kitty Howard. I will not fight for my life like Margaret Pole. I will not go cheerfully in my best coat like Bishop Fisher. I am as inadequate to this task as I am to my marriage. I will fail at my death as I have failed as queen.

Other days I wake cheerfully, certain that the king is doing what he himself told me is the best way to rule: favour one side and then the other, keep your thoughts a secret from everyone, be the master in the dogfight and let the curs fight it out before you. I assure myself that he is just tormenting me, as he torments everyone. He will get better and send for me, praise my beauty and remind me that I am no scholar, give me diamonds reset from a broken pectoral cross, tell me that I am the sweetest wife a man ever had and dress me in someone else’s gown.

‘George Blagge has been arrested,’ Nan tells me quietly as we walk to chapel one morning. She grips my hand as I stumble. ‘They came for him last night.’

George Blagge is a fat plain adventurer, a favourite of the king because of his round ugly face and his terrible habit of snorting with laughter at a bawdy joke. People compose jokes just to hear Blagge snuffling with laughter, blushing rosy red and then finally unable to contain his great snorting bellow. The king calls him ‘his beloved pig’ and Will Somers does a fine impression of Blagge hearing a joke that is almost as funny as the real thing. But he will not be doing that trick again.

‘What has he done?’ I ask.

George Blagge is no fool, for all that he has a laugh like a farrowing sow. In serious mood he has come to my rooms and listened to the sermons. He says little, and thinks a lot. I cannot believe that he would ever have said anything that might offend the king; to the king he is a playmate, not a philosopher.

‘They say he spoke disrespectfully about the Mass, and then he snorted with laughter,’ Nan whispers.

‘Snorted with laughter?’ I look blankly at her. ‘But that’s what he does; that amuses the king.’

‘Now it’s disrespect,’ she says. ‘And now he’s charged with heresy.’

‘For snorting?’

She nods.

John Dudley Lord Lisle, the rising man and a believer in religious reform, now comes home from France with a peace treaty in his pocket. All the while that Stephen Gardiner was treating with the emperor, aiming for a peace with Spain, selling the reformers to their death in exchange for a renewed loving alliance with the pope, John Dudley was secretly meeting with the French admiral and hammering out an agreement where we keep Boulogne for decades to come and the French pay us a handsome fee. This should be the moment of triumph for John Dudley, for the Seymours, and for all of us who share the reform faith. We have won the race to peace, we have made peace with the French and not with the papist Spanish.

He comes to my rooms to receive my congratulations. The Princess Mary is at my side, putting a brave face on the turn of events that remove England from alliance with her mother’s family.

‘But, my lord, if we have peace with the French, then I suppose that the king is unlikely to make his new alliance with the German princes and the Elector Palatine?’

The studied blankness of poor Mary’s face tells me how anxiously she is awaiting his response.

‘Indeed, His Majesty will not need the friendship of the German princes,’ John Dudley replies. ‘We have a lasting alliance with France, we need no other.’

‘Perhaps no betrothal,’ I whisper to Mary and watch the colour flood into her face. I make a little gesture to give her permission to stand aside and she goes to the window bay to compose herself.

As soon as her back is turned, the smile disappears from John Dudley’s face. ‘Your Majesty, what in God’s name is happening here?’

‘The king is arresting those in favour of reform,’ I say quietly. ‘People are disappearing from court, and from the London churches. There’s no sense in it. One day someone is at dinner the next they are gone.’

‘I hear that Nicholas Shaxton has been summoned to London to answer charges of heresy. I couldn’t believe it. He was Bishop of Salisbury! They can’t arrest a former bishop.’

I didn’t know this. He can see the shock in my face. For one of the king’s own bishops to be arrested like this is to return to the dark days of the martyred churchmen, and John Fisher walking to the scaffold. The king had sworn he would never allow such cruelty again.

‘Hugh Latimer, who preached before me in the Lent season, has been summoned to explain to the Privy Council what topics he chose,’ I tell John Dudley.

‘The Privy Council are theologians now? They are going to debate with Latimer? I wish them the best with that.’

‘Stephen Gardiner will certainly debate with him. He is defending the Six Articles,’ I say. ‘And that is an easy side to take for there is a new law that nobody may speak against them.’

‘But the Six Articles are halfway to popery!’ he exclaims. ‘The king himself said—’

‘Now, they are the king’s express opinion,’ I interrupt.

‘His opinion for now!’

I bow and say nothing.

‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ John Dudley recovers himself. ‘It’s just that I feel as if the Seymours and Cranmer and I are away from court for five minutes and the old churchmen get hold of the king, and when we return we find all the gains we have made and everything we believe are set back. Can’t you do anything?’

‘I can’t even see him,’ I say. ‘I can’t ask for mercy for the others because I never see him. I am afraid of what they say about me.’

He nods. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he says. ‘But perhaps you should limit your studies.’

‘My books are gone,’ I say bitterly. ‘See the empty shelves? My papers, too.’

I had hoped he would say that there was no need for me to destroy my library. But he simply asks: ‘And have you stopped your sermons and talks?’

‘We listen only to the king’s chaplains, and their sermons are as dull as they can make them.’

‘What subjects?’

‘Wifely obedience,’ I say drily, but not even that makes him smile.

Hugh Latimer, ordered to appear as a suspect before the Privy Council where he had once spoken as an authority, admits that he preached a series of sermons before me – undeniable – since half the Privy Council’s wives, and some of the Privy Council themselves, attended. He does not agree that he said anything heretical, nor anything tending to reform. He says that he preached on the Word of God, and stayed inside the current teaching of the church. They release him; but the next day they arrest another preacher from my afternoon studies, Doctor Edward Crome, and they accuse him of denying the existence of purgatory.

This, he has to admit. Of course he denies the existence of purgatory. If they asked me, or indeed anyone with any sense, no-one could say that there is any evidence for such a place. Heaven, yes – Our Lord speaks of it Himself – hell, yes – He harrows it for sinners. But nowhere does the Bible suggest that there is some ridiculous place where souls must wait and can be bought out of their suffering by a donation to the church or the bawling of Masses in paid chantries. There is simply no reference for this, there is no scholarship to support it. So where has this story come from? The authorship is clear: it is an invention by the church as a way of getting a great income from the suffering of bereaved families, and the fears of dying sinners. The king himself has abolished chantries – how can purgatory exist?

But it is the king who authorises these arrests, the king who has authorised all of them since the spring herding of scholars and preachers and people related to me. The Privy Council will make inquiries, name names, demand explanations, but the king alone decides who shall be arrested. Either he signs his name, the signature scrawled carelessly, the warrant held on the sheets of his sickbed, or he tells the men he trusts in his chamber, Anthony Denny, and John Gates, to use the dry stamp of his signature, and ink it in later. But either way, the warrant is brought to him for his personal express approval. He may be groaning in pain, he may be half asleep, drugged with painkillers and strong wine, but he knows. This is not a plot by papists at his court moving against my beliefs and my friends without the king’s knowledge, taking advantage of his sickness and fatigue. It is a plot by the king himself, against my beliefs and against my friends – perhaps even against me. This is the king setting the dogs to fight, but this time favouring one side against the other, putting a fortune on the outcome. Favouring my enemies against me, putting me, his wife, into the dog-pit.

‘She’s here. Anne Askew is here, right here! Now!’ Joan Denny rushes in to my rooms and kneels before me, as if her legs cannot hold her up.

‘She has come to see me?’ I cannot believe that she would take such a risk, knowing that her teachers and mentors are in the Tower. ‘She cannot come in. Tell her I am sorry but—’

‘No! No! Arrested! Summoned to see the Privy Council. They are questioning her now.’

‘Who told you?’

‘My husband. He says he will do what he can for her.’

I take a breath. I want to tell her that Anthony Denny must make sure that my name is not mentioned, or at any rate, not repeated to the king. But I am so afraid, and so ashamed of my fear, that I cannot speak. I am so afraid of what Anne might say, what she might tell the Privy Council. What if she says that she preached heresy to us, and that we listened? What if she tells them that I am writing my own book, filled with forbidden knowledge? But I cannot tell Joan, who has listened with me, who studies with me, who prays beside me, that my first thought is to save my own fearful skin. I am afraid and ashamed of my fear.

‘God keep her safe,’ is all I say out loud.

‘Amen.’

They hold her overnight, somewhere in this great rambling palace. As my maid dresses me for dinner I ask her where Anne Askew might be. She does not know. There are dozens of windowless cellar rooms and attic rooms and treasure rooms that can be locked from the outside. If they don’t care for her comfort or safety they could simply throw her in the guardhouse. I dare not send anyone to look for her. At dinner, Bishop Gardiner intones an interminable grace and I bow my head and listen to him mouthing the Latin words, knowing that half the room cannot understand him; and he does not care because he is completing his ritual, his private ritual, he does not care that they are as children asking for bread and receiving a stone. I have to wait for him to finish his sing-song skimble-skamble, raise my head and nod for the servers to enter. I have to smile and eat and command the room, laugh at Will Somers, send out dishes to William Paget and Thomas Wriothesley as if they are not plotting my downfall, bow to the Duke of Norfolk, who sits at the head of his family table, his face a bland mask of courtier charm, his reformer son still missing. I have to behave as if I have not a single care in all the world, while somewhere in the great palace, my friend Anne eats the cold leavings from the court’s dinner, and prays on her knees that God will keep her safe tomorrow.

‘They have summoned me to question her.’ My brother strolls up to my chair while the court is dancing. My ladies, their faces stiff with smiles, form up into sets and go through their steps.

‘Will you refuse?’

‘How can I? It’s a test. I am on trial here too, and if I fail they will move on to you. No, I will question her and hope I can guide her to a plea for forgiveness. I know she won’t recant her beliefs; but she might agree that she is ill-educated.’

‘She knows the Bible backwards and forwards,’ I say. ‘She knows the New Testament by heart. No-one can call her ill-educated.’

‘She can’t argue with Stephen Gardiner.’

‘I think you’ll find that she will.’

‘Then what am I to do?’ William exclaims in sudden impatience. At once he throws back his head and laughs, a courtier’s laugh, to suggest that he is telling me a funny story. I laugh with him, and I tap his hand, my comical brother.

Will Somers lopes past us with a grimace. ‘If you are ready to laugh at nothing you might laugh at me,’ he says.

I clap my hands. ‘We were laughing at an old jest, not worth repeating,’ I say.

‘They’re the only ones I have.’

We wait until he has gone by. ‘Try to give her a way out, without incriminating yourself,’ I say. ‘She is a young woman, full of life. She’s not seeking martyrdom. She’ll save herself if she can. Just give her a way. And I will try to see the king.’

‘What is he doing?’ my brother whispers. ‘What does he mean by this? Has he turned against us? Has he turned against you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I look at my brother’s anxious face and I realise, coldly, that five women have sat here, in this very seat before me, and not known if the king had turned against them and, if he had, what he was planning to do.

When dinner is over I send Nan to the king’s rooms to ask if I may see him. She comes back surprised: I am to be admitted. She rushes me into my most flattering hood and we pull down the front of my gown, and pat oil of roses into my neck. She and Catherine attend me as far as the king’s bedroom and the guards open the door and I go in alone.

Sir Anthony Denny is there, and Bishop Gardiner. Doctor Wendy is at the back of the room with half a dozen grooms and servers standing around, waiting to move the king from chair to bed, as he wishes, to lift him onto his close-stool, or to help him into his wheeled chair so that he can go into his presence chamber and pass like a great statue paraded among his people.

‘My lord,’ I say, curtseying.

He smiles at me and beckons for me to come close. I bend down and kiss him, ignoring the stink. He puts his arm around my waist and squeezes me. ‘Ah, Kat. Did you and the court enjoy a good dinner?’

‘You were very much missed,’ I say, taking a chair beside him. ‘I hope you will be well enough to join us soon. It feels like a long time since we had the joy of your presence.’

‘I am sure of it,’ he says cheerfully. ‘This was just the quartain fever that I get from time to time. Doctor Wendy says I throw it off like a boy.’

I nod enthusiastically. ‘Your strength is remarkable.’

‘Well, the buzzards may hover but there is nothing for them to pick at yet.’ His gesture indicates Bishop Gardiner as a buzzard and I smile at the bishop’s cross face.

‘I am more of a lark that goes high to sing your praises,’ the bishop says with awkward humour.

‘A lark, my lord bishop?’ I put my head on one side as if to scrutinise his white surplice and black stole. ‘More like a swallow in your colouring.’

‘You see Stephen as a swallow?’ Henry prompts me, amused. ‘He arrives and suddenly it is summer,’ I say. ‘He is a harbinger. When the bishop is here it is high summer for the Privy Council to make an inquiry. Time for all the old churchmen to nest and twitter under the eaves. It is their season.’

‘Are they not here to stay?’

‘The cold winds of truth will blow them away, I think, lord husband.’

The king laughs. Stephen Gardiner is quietly furious.

‘Would you have him dress any differently?’ the king asks me. I am daring, encouraged by his laughter. I turn my head and whisper in his ear, ‘Don’t you think his lordship would suit the colour red?’

Red is the colour of a cardinal’s robes. If Gardiner could bring the country back to Rome the pope would give him a cardinal’s hat in a moment. Henry laughs aloud. ‘Kateryn, you have a sharper wit than Will! What d’you say, Stephen? Do you long for a red hat?’

Stephen Gardiner’s mouth is pursed. ‘These are grave matters,’ he manages to say. ‘Not fit for a jest. Not fit for ladies. Not fit for wives.’

‘He’s right.’ The king is suddenly weary. ‘We must let our good friend defend our church against heresy and mockery, Kat. It is my church, not a subject for debate or humour. These are serious matters, not for foolish mockery. There is nothing more important.’

‘Of course,’ I say gently. ‘Of course, my lord. All I would ask is that the good bishop questions people who speak against your reforms. The reforms themselves should not be questioned. The bishop cannot want us to step backwards, away from your understanding, back to the old days before you were head of the church.’

‘He won’t do that,’ the king says shortly.

‘The chantries . . .’

‘Not now, Kateryn. I am weary.’

‘Your Majesty must rest,’ I say quickly, getting up from the chair and kissing his forehead, which is damp with sweat. ‘Will you sleep now?’

‘I will,’ he says. ‘You can all go.’ He retains my cool fingers in his hot grip. ‘Come back later,’ he says to me.

I make sure I don’t shoot a triumphant glance at Stephen Gardiner. I have won this round, at least.

It is no victory, my whorish triumph. The king is feverish and sleepless, impotent and irritated at his failing. Though I do everything he asks of me, let down my hair, take off my robe, even stand, burning with humiliation, while he passes his hands all over me, nothing can stir him. He sends me away so that he can sleep alone and I sit up all night by the fire in my room and wonder where Anne Askew is in the palace, sleepless as I am sleepless, afraid as I am afraid, and if she even has a bed tonight.

The next round is played out before the Privy Council and I cannot be there. The doors to the Privy Council room are closed and two yeomen of the guard stand before them at attention, their pikes raised.

‘She’s in there,’ Catherine Brandon mutters to me in an undertone, as we walk past the wood-panelled door on our way to the garden. ‘They took her in this morning.’

‘Alone?’

‘She was arrested with her former husband but she said he was nothing to her and they dismissed him. She’s alone.’

‘They know that she has preached before me?’

‘Of course, and they know it was your instruction to Bishop Bonner that she should be freed last time.’

‘But they don’t fear my influence? He did, then.’

‘It seems your influence has diminished,’ she says flatly.

‘How has my influence diminished?’ I demand. ‘The king still sees me, he still speaks tenderly to me. He commanded me to his bed last night. He promised me gifts. All the signs say that he still loves me.’

She nods. ‘I know he does, but he can do all that and disagree with your faith. Now he agrees with Stephen Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk and all of the rest of them, Paget and Bonner, Rich and Wriothesley.’

‘But all his other lords are for reform,’ I protest.

‘But they’re not at court,’ she counters. ‘Edward Seymour is either in Scotland or Boulogne. He’s such a reliable commander that he is always away. His success is our disadvantage. Thomas Cranmer is studying at his home. You’re not admitted when the king is ill, and he has been ill for weeks. Doctor Wendy is not an advocate for reform like Doctor Butts was. To keep something before the king, to maintain his interest in it, you have to be in his company, all the time. My husband, Charles, said he always kept at the king’s side because a rival was always ready to take his place. You have to make sure you are beside him, Your Majesty. You have to get into his presence and be there all the time, to put our side of the argument.’

‘I understand. I try. But how can we defend Anne Askew before the Privy Council?’

She offers me her hand as we go down the stairs to the garden.

‘God will defend her,’ she says. ‘If they find her guilty then we will beg the king for a pardon for her. You can take all your ladies in to him, he’ll like that, and we can go on our knees. But we can do nothing for her now, as she faces the Privy Council; only God will have her in His keeping there.’

The Privy Council sits wrangling with the young woman from Lincolnshire all day, as if she, slightly educated and not yet thirty, should take more than a moment of their time to challenge and discredit. Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester, and Edmund Bonner Bishop of London, argue theology with the young woman who has never been inside a university hall; but they cannot demonstrate her mistake.

‘Why would they spend so much time on her?’ I demand. ‘Why not just order her back to her husband, if they want to silence her?’

I am pacing up and down in my room. I can’t sit still to reading or study, but I cannot go and demand that they open those forbidding doors. I cannot leave Anne in there alone with her enemies, my enemies, but equally I cannot rescue her. I dare not go to the king without invitation. I hope to see him before dinner, I hope that he is well enough to come to dinner, and I cannot bear to wait.

There is a noise outside and the guards open the door to my brother and three companions. I whirl round.

‘Brother?’

‘Your Majesty.’ He bows. ‘Sister.’

He hesitates, he can’t speak. Out of the corner of my eye I see my sister, Nan, rise to her feet, as Catherine stretches out a hand to her. Anne Seymour’s eyes widen, her jaw drops, she crosses herself.

The silence seems to stretch for hours. I realise that everyone is looking at me. Slowly I take in my brother’s aghast face, the guards beside him. Slowly, I realise that they all think that he has come to arrest me. I can feel my hands tremble and I clasp them together. If Anne has incriminated me then the Privy Council will have ordered my arrest. It would be like them to send my own brother to take me to the Tower as a way of testing his loyalty, and confirming my fall.

‘What do you want, William? You look very strange! Dear brother, what have you come for?’

As if my words have released a mechanism, the clock on my table strikes three with a silvery chime, William steps inside the room and the guards swing the doors closed behind him.

‘Has the meeting ended?’ My voice is choked.

‘Yes,’ he says shortly.

I see that his face is grave and I put my hand on the back of a chair for support. ‘You look very serious, William.’

‘I don’t have good news.’

‘Tell me quickly.’

‘Anne Askew has been sent to Newgate Prison. They could not persuade her to recant. She will have to stand trial as a heretic.’

The room goes silent and everything seems to melt and swirl before my eyes. I grip the chair back to help me stand, and blink furiously. ‘She would not recant?’

‘They sent for Prince Edward’s tutor to persuade her. But she quoted them verse after verse from the Bible and proved them wrong.’

‘Could you not save her?’ I burst out. ‘William, could you say nothing to save her?’

‘She confounded me,’ he says miserably. ‘She looked me in the face and said that it was a great shame on me that I should advise her, against my own knowledge.’

I gasp. ‘She accused you of thinking as she does? She’s going to name the people who believe as she does?’

He shakes his head. ‘No! No! She was very careful in what she said: meticulous. She named nobody. Not me, not a word against you or your ladies. She accused me of advising her against my own knowledge; but she did not say what my knowledge might be.’

I am ashamed of my next question. ‘Did anyone mention me at all?’

‘They put it to her that she preached in your rooms, and she said so do many preachers of many different beliefs. They tried to get her to name her friends in your rooms.’ Carefully he looks at the floor so no-one can say he exchanged a glance with anyone. ‘She would not. She was stubborn. She would not give any names.

‘It was clear, sister, very clear, that the only thing they wanted from her was proof of your meetings, heretical meetings. They would have released her, then and there, if she had named you as a heretic.’

‘You’re saying that it’s me they want, not her,’ I say quietly through stiff lips.

He nods. ‘It was obvious. Obvious to everyone. She knows.’

I am silent for a moment, trying to push down my fear into my churning belly. I try to be brave, as Anne Boleyn was brave. She protested the innocence of her brother, of her friends. ‘Is there any way we can get her released?’ I ask. ‘Does she have to go to trial? Should I go to the king and tell him that they have wrongly imprisoned her?’

William looks at me as if I have lost my wits. ‘Kat – he knows already. Don’t be stupid. This is not Gardiner running ahead of the king, this is Gardiner doing only what the king wants. The king himself signed the warrant for her arrest, approved her being sent for trial, ordered that she be held at Newgate until she is tried. He will have prepared an instruction for the jury. He will have decided already.’

‘A jury should be independent!’

‘But it is not. He’ll tell them what verdict to bring in. But she’ll have to stand trial. Her only safety would be to recant at her trial.’

‘I don’t think she’ll do that.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘What will happen then?’

He just looks at me. We both know what will happen then.

‘What will happen to us?’ he asks miserably.

To my surprise, the king comes to my rooms with the gentlemen of his household and some of the Privy Council to escort us in to dinner. It has been a long time since the king was well enough to lead me in to dine. They come in noisily as if celebrating his return to court. He cannot walk, he cannot even stand on his ulcerated leg, but comes in his wheeled chair with his thickly bandaged leg extended before him. He is laughing at this, as if it were a temporary injury from jousting or hunting, and the court takes its cue from him, and laughs too, as if we expect to see him dancing tomorrow or the day after. Catherine Brandon says she will commission a rival chair and there can be a chair joust with the king in the lists, and he swears it must be done and we shall have chair jousting tomorrow. Will Somers dances before him as he is wheeled into the room, pretends to fall and be run over by the inexorable progress of the huge chair and the massive man half reclining inside it.

‘Moloch! I have been run over by Moloch!’ Will mourns.

‘Will, if I had run you over, you wouldn’t be here to shout about it,’ the king warns him. ‘Keep away from the wheels, Fool.’

Will responds with a somersaulting dive that throws him out of the way just in time. My ladies shriek a warning and laugh as if it is extraordinarily funny. We are all on edge, all anxious to keep the king in his sunny mood.

‘I swear I will mow you down in my chariot,’ Henry shouts.

‘Can’t catch me,’ Will replies cheekily, and at once Henry bellows at the two pages, sweating behind the handles of the chair, that they must pursue Will around my presence chamber as he dances and leaps, balancing on benches, springing up to the window seat, darting round my ladies, snatching them by the waist and spinning them round so the king charges at them and not him, sending them screaming and giggling out of the way. It is a romp with everyone running in one direction or another and Henry at the centre of it all, red-faced, bellowing with laughter and shouting, ‘Faster! Faster!’ At the end, Will collapses in a heap and snatches up a piece of white embroidery above his head, waving it in a sign of surrender.

‘You are Helios,’ he tells Henry. ‘And I am just a little cloud.’

‘You are a great Fool,’ Henry says affectionately, ‘and you have disrupted my wife’s rooms, frightened her ladies and caused endless confusion with your folly.’

‘We are a pair of young fools,’ Will says, smiling up at his master. ‘As foolish as we were when we were twenty. But at least Your Majesty is wiser than you were then.’

‘How so?’

‘You are more wise and more kingly. You are more handsome and more brave.’

Henry smiles, anticipating the joke. ‘I am indeed.’

‘Your Majesty, there is more of you altogether,’ Will crows. ‘Much more. The queen has more of a husband than most women.’

Henry bellows his deep-throated laugh and loses his breath in coughing. ‘You are a varlet; go and get your dinner with the hounds in the kitchen.’

Will bows gracefully and retires out of the way. As he passes me I catch a quick smile from him, almost as if he was acknowledging to me that he has done his best; all I have to do is to get through dinner. Not for the first time, I wonder how much of a fool Will Somers can be: a long-term survivor of this knife-edge court.

‘Shall we go in to dinner?’ the king asks me.

I smile and curtsey, and we proceed, a strange awkward procession, headed by the king in his chair and the panting pages, with me walking beside my husband, my hand on his, resting on the arm of his chair, while he wheezes, sweat pouring from his huge body, staining the armpits of his gold silk jacket and soaking his collar, and I wonder how long this can go on.

‘Did you have a sermon this afternoon?’ he asks courteously as the server pours water from a golden jug over his hands and another pats his fingers dry with a white linen napkin.

‘Yes,’ I say holding out my hands for fresh scented water. ‘We had Your Majesty’s chaplain talk to us about grace. It was very interesting, very thought-provoking.’

‘Nothing too wild,’ the king says with an indulgent smile. ‘Nothing that would make young Tom Howard argumentative, I hope. He is released from the Tower but I can’t have him upsetting his father again.’

I smile as if it means nothing to me but an afternoon’s entertainment. ‘Nothing wild at all, Your Majesty. Just the Word of God and a churchman’s understanding of it.’

‘It’s all well and good in your rooms,’ he says, suddenly irritable. ‘But they can’t go on discussing it in the streets and the taprooms. It’s one thing for scholars to debate, it’s quite another when it’s some girl from a farm and some fool of an apprentice trying to read and wrestle with ideas.’

‘I quite agree,’ I say. ‘That is why Your Majesty was so gracious when you gave them a Bible in English, and they so wish they could have it back again. Then they can quietly read and learn. Then they have a chance of understanding. They don’t have to gather to have one recite and another explain.’

He turns his big face towards me. His neck is so thick and his cheeks are so fat that his face is quite square from the white embroidered collar at the neck of his jacket to the sparse fringe of his hair at the top of his forehead. It is like being glared at by a block of stone. ‘No. You misunderstand me,’ he says coldly. ‘I didn’t give them the Bible for that. I don’t think that a farm girl from Lincoln should be reading and learning. I don’t think she should be studying and thinking. I have no desire to advance her understanding. And I am very sure she should not be preaching.’

I swallow a sip of wine. I see that my hand is steady on the glass. On the other side of the king I notice the small downturned face of Stephen Gardiner, ibbling at his dinner and straining his ears to listen.

‘You gave the people the Bible,’I persist. ‘Whether you wish them to keep it in the churches for everyone to read, or whether you want it to be read only reverently and quietly in the better sort of houses, must be your decision. It is your gift, you shall decide where it goes. But there are preachers who have read the words and learned them and understand them better than some of the greatest men in the church. And why is that? For they did not go to college to chop logic, and invent ritual, and pride themselves on their learning; they went to the Bible, to nowhere else and nothing else. It is beautiful. Your Majesty, the piety of simple people is beautiful. And their loyalty to you and their love of you is beautiful as well.’

He is a little mollified. ‘They are loyal? They don’t question me along with the teachings of the church?’

‘They know their father,’ I say firmly. ‘They were brought up in your England, they know that you make the laws that keep them safe, they know that you lead the armies that protect their country, that you plan and direct the ships that keep the seas for them. Of course they love you as their holy father.’

He snorts with laughter. ‘A Holy Father? Like a pope?’

‘Like a pope,’ I say steadily. ‘The pope is nothing more than the Bishop of Rome. He leads the church in Italy. What are you but the greatest of the churchmen in England? You are the Supreme Head of the church, are you not? You sit above every other churchman, do you not? You lead the church in England.’

Henry turns to Gardiner the bishop. ‘Her Majesty has a point,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think?’

Gardiner finds a thin smile. ‘Your Majesty is blessed in a wife who loves scholarly discussion,’ he says. ‘Who would have thought that a woman could reason so? And to a husband who was such a lion of learning? Surely she has tamed you!’

The king commands that I sit with him after dinner and I take this as a mark of his favour. Doctor Wendy prepares a sleeping draught for him as the court stands around him, his great bandaged leg sticking out into the concerned circle. Stephen Gardiner and old Thomas Howard stand on one side, and my ladies and I are opposite, as if we would forcibly drag his chair from one side to the other. For a moment I look at the faces around my husband, the set smiles of the courtiers, the self-conscious charm of everyone, and I realise that everyone is anxious as I, everyone is weary as I am. We are all waiting for the king to put an end to this evening, to release us all for the night. In truth, some of us are waiting for a more lasting peace. Some are waiting for him to die.

Whoever wins the battle for the king’s wavering attention now, will win the next reign. Whoever he favours now, will inherit a prime place when Edward comes to the throne. My husband has described these people to me as dogs waiting for his favour, but for the first time I see it for myself, and know that I am one of them. My future depends on his favour just as theirs does, and tonight I cannot be sure that I have it.

‘Is the pain very bad?’ Doctor Wendy asks him quietly.

‘It is unbearable!’ the king snaps. ‘Doctor Butts would never have let it get this bad.’

‘This should help,’ Doctor Wendy says humbly, and proffers a glass.

Sulkily, the king takes it and drinks it down. He turns to a page. ‘Sweetmeats,’ he says abruptly. The lad dashes to the cupboard and brings out a tray of candied fruits, sugared plums, toffee apples, marchpane and pastries. The king takes a handful and crushes them against his rotting teeth.

‘God knows it was merrier in England before every village had a preacher,’ Thomas Howard says, continuing one of his slow thoughts.

‘But every village had a priest,’ I counter. ‘And every priest a tithe, and every church a chantry, and every town a monastery. There was more preaching then, than there is now; but it was done in a language that nobody could understand, at a terrible price for the poor.’

Thomas Howard, slow of wit and bad-tempered, scowls his disagreement. ‘I don’t see what they need to understand,’ he says stubbornly. He looks down at the king and sees the great moon face turn one way then the other. ‘I don’t hold with fools and women setting themselves up as learned,’ the duke says. ‘Like that stupid girl today.’

I dare not speak of Anne by name. But I can defend her beliefs. ‘Since Our Lord spoke in simple language to simple people, in stories that they could understand, why should we not do so?’ I ask. ‘Why should they not read the stories in the simple words of the Son of God?’

‘Because they go on and on!’ Thomas Howard suddenly bursts out. ‘Because it’s not as if they read and think in silence! Every time I ride by Saint Paul’s cross there are half a dozen of them, cawing away like crows! How many shall we endure? How much noise shall they be allowed to make?’

Laughing, I turn to the king. ‘Your Majesty does not think like this, I know,’ I say with more confidence than I feel. ‘Your Majesty loves scholarship and respectful discussion of the Bible.’

But his face is sour. ‘Sweetmeats,’ he says again to the page. ‘You can leave us, ladies. Stephen, you stay by me.’

It is a snub, but I am not going to let Stephen Gardiner or that fool Norfolk think I am offended. I rise to my feet and curtsey to the king and kiss him goodnight on his damp cheek. He does not squeeze my haunches as I bend over him, and I am relieved that all the court does not watch him pet me like his hound. I give a cool nod to the bishop and the duke, who seem to be clinging to their places. ‘Goodnight, my lord husband, and God bless you,’ I say gently. ‘I shall pray that your pain is eased by the morning.’

He grunts a farewell, and I lead my ladies out of the room. Nan glances back as we go and sees that Stephen Gardiner has been given a seat and he is head to head with the king.

‘I’d like to know what that false priest is saying,’ Nan says irritably.

I kneel at the foot of my gorgeously carved wooden bed and I pray for Anne Askew, who will be lying on a stinking pallet of straw at Newgate tonight. I pray for all the other prisoners of faith, those that I know, since they have been in my rooms talking with me, and those that have been in my service and are now being forced to betray me, and those that I will never know: in England, in Germany and far, far away.

I know that Anne will endure this for her faith but I cannot bear to think of her lying in the dark, listening to the rats rustle in the corners, and the groans of other prisoners. The punishment for heresy is death by burning. Although I am certain that neither Gardiner nor the king will send a young woman, a young gentlewoman, to such a brutal end, the thought of her facing public trial is enough to make me shudder and bury my face in my hands. All she has said is that the bread of the Mass is bread, the wine of the Mass is wine. Surely they won’t keep her in prison for saying no more than everyone knows?

Our Lord said: ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ but he was no trickster like the false priests who dribble red ink from the wounds of statues. He meant: ‘Think of me when you eat bread, think of me when you drink wine. Consume me in your heart.’ Thomas Cranmer’s liturgy makes this clear, and the king himself supports this reading. We have published this; it can be read in English. Why then should Anne be sleeping tonight in Newgate with a trial before her and the Bishop of London demanding that she recant, when she has said no more than the King of England has ruled?

It is late when I finally go to bed and Nan is already asleep on her side. The sheets are cold but I don’t send for the maid to warm them. I am ashamed of the luxury of the smooth sheets and the white on white embroidery under my fingertips. I think of Anne on her bed of straw, and Thomas in a cramped bunk at sea, his cabin swaying around him, and I think that I suffer nothing; and yet I am unhappy, like a spoilt child.

I fall asleep almost at once, and almost at once I dream that I am climbing a circular stair in an old castle, not one of our palaces – it is too cold and damp for any of the king’s houses. My hand rests on the outer wall and there is icy water beneath the arrow-slit windows. The stair is dark, barred with moonlight, the steps worn and uneven. I can hardly see my way from one window to another. I hear someone whispering from the foot of the stair, his voice echoing up the tower: ‘Tryphine! Tryphine!’ and I give a little gasp of fear for now I know who I am, and what I am going to find.

The stair arrives on a stone landing at the top of the tower facing three small wooden doors. I don’t want to open the doors, and I don’t want to enter the rooms behind them; but the whisper of my name ‘Tryphine!’, hissing up the stair behind me, forces me on. The first door opens with a ring handle that moves under my grip, lifting the latch on the inside of the door. I don’t like to think who might hear this, who might be in there, turning their heads, seeing the latch lifting, but I feel the door yield against my hand and I push it open. I can see the little room by the light of the moon coming in through the narrow window. I can see just enough to make out a piece of machinery taking up the whole length of the room.

I think at first that it is some kind of loom for weaving tapestry. It is a long raised bed with two great rollers at either end, and a lever in the middle. Then I step a little closer and I see that a woman is strapped to it, arms above her head, horribly wrenched out of shape, her feet, strapped to the bottom end, turned out as if her legs are broken. Someone has lashed her hands and feet and hauled on the lever so the rollers turn over and the gulf between them widens. This has dragged her arms out of their sockets and her elbows have popped out of joint, her hips and knees and even her ankle bones are torn apart. The agony makes a white mask of her face, but even so, I recognise Anne Askew. I stumble back from the torture room and fall against the next door. That room is empty and silent. I draw a breath in momentary relief at being spared any further horror but then I smell smoke. There is smoke coming from the floorboards, and the boards themselves are getting hotter. And now, in the strange life of the dream, I am myself tied, hands behind my back. I am standing, strapped to a stake, and I am lashed with chains so that I cannot move, and my feet are no longer on floorboards but are shifting anxiously on cords of wood. It is getting hotter and hotter and there is smoke in my eyes and mouth, and I am beginning to cough. I gasp and I feel my throat scorched by the hot smoke. Then I see a little flicker of the first flame from the wood under my feet, and I cough again, flinching away from it. ‘No,’ I say, but I cannot speak for smoke, and as I breathe in the heat of the smoke burns my throat and I cough and cough . . .

‘Wake!’ Nan says. ‘Wake up! Here.’ She presses a cup of ale into my hand. ‘Wake up!’

I cling to the cold cup, my hands covering hers. ‘Nan! Nan!’

‘Hush. You’re awake now. You’re safe now.’

‘I dreamed of Anne.’ I am still choking as if the smoke were still burning my lungs.

‘God bless her and keep her,’ Nan says instantly. ‘What did you dream?’

Already the horrific clarity of the dream is fading from me. ‘I thought I saw her . . . I thought I saw the rack . . .’

‘There’s no rack in Newgate,’ Nan says, firmly practical. ‘And she’s not a common traitor to be racked. They don’t torture women, and she is a gentleman’s daughter. Her father served the king, no-one can lay a hand on her. You just had a bad dream. It means nothing.’

‘They wouldn’t rack her?’ I clear my throat.

‘Of course not,’ Nan says. ‘Many of them knew her father, and her husband is a wealthy yeoman. They’ll hold her for a couple of days, hoping to give her a fright, and then send her home to that poor husband of hers, like they did before.’

‘She won’t stand trial?’

‘Of course they’ll say that she must face a jury and threaten her with a guilty verdict. But they’ll send her home to her husband and tell him to beat her. Nobody is going to torture a lady with a noble father and a wealthy husband. Nobody is going to send a woman as argumentative as that into a public courtroom.’

Despite Nan’s words I can’t sleep, and next morning I have my maids pinch my cheeks and powder me with rouge to try to make me look less haggard. I must not resemble a woman sleepless with fear, and I know that the court is watching. Everyone knows that my woman preacher is in Newgate Prison today; I have to appear completely indifferent. I lead my ladies to chapel and then to breakfast as if we are in good spirits, and the king himself, wheeled in his chariot, meets me at the door to the great hall. There, to my amazement, bounding through the great front doors, is George Blagge, like Lazarus up from the grave, released from prison, fat and cheerful as ever, a man accused of heresy but galloping into the king’s presence like a friend returned from an adventure.

Stephen Gardiner has a face like thunder. Behind him Sir Richard Rich scowls as this man, thrown into prison for nothing worse than attending the sermons in my rooms, kneels before the king and looks up to show him a beaming face.

‘Pig! My pig!’ cries the king, laughing and leaning forward in his chair to pull him to his feet. ‘Is it you? Are you safe?’

George snorts in his joy and at once Will Somers triumphantly snorts in reply as if a herd of swine were celebrating George’s return. The king roars with laughter; even William Paget hides a smile.

‘If Your Majesty had not been so good to his pig, I should have been roasted by now!’ George crows.

‘Smoked like back bacon!’ the king replies. He turns in his chair and narrows his eyes at Stephen Gardiner. ‘Wherever the hunt for heretics leads you, those that I love are exempt,’ he says. ‘There is a line that I expect you to observe, Gardiner. Don’t forget who my friends are. No friend of mine could be a heretic. To be loved by me is to be inside the church. I am the head of the church: no-one can love me and be outside my church.’

Quietly I step forward and rest my hand on my husband’s shoulder. Together we look at the bishop who has arrested my friends, my yeoman of the guard, my preachers, my bookseller and the brother of my doctor. Stephen Gardiner drops his eyes before our gaze.

‘I apologise,’ he says. ‘I apologise for the error.’

I am triumphant at this public humiliation of Stephen Gardiner, and my ladies rejoice with me. George Blagge is welcomed back to court with the king’s declaration of his love for him, and the king’s declaration of his protection over those who love him. I take it that we are to be reassured by this. The tide that was flowing so strongly in favour of tradition and against reform has gone still, and is now on the turn, as tides ebb and flow, drawn by some invisible power. Perhaps it is the pull of the moon, as the new philosophers suggest. At court, where the tides of power are pulled this way and that by the turn of the expressionless moon-face of the king, we know that we reformers are a spring tide once again, flowing strong and high.

‘So how can we get Anne Askew released?’ I ask Nan and Catherine Brandon. ‘The king released George Blagge for love of him. Clearly, we are rising high again. How quickly can we set her free?’

‘Do you think you are strong enough to act?’ Nan queries.

‘George’s return shows that the king has gone as far as he wants with the old churchmen. Now we return to favour.’ I am certain. ‘And anyway, we have to take a risk for Anne. She can’t stay in Newgate. It’s at the very heart of disease and the plague. We have to get her out of there.’

‘I can send one of my men to see that she is housed well, and well fed,’ Catherine says. ‘We can bribe the guards to let her have some comforts. We can get her into a clean cell and get her books as well as food and warm clothes.’

‘Do that,’ I nod. ‘But how can we get her released?’

‘What about our cousin Nicholas Throckmorton? He can go and speak with her,’ Nan suggests. ‘He knows the law, and he is a good Christian of the reform faith. He must have listened to her speak in your rooms a dozen times. He should go and see what can be done and we can speak to Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife. Anthony is in constant attendance on the king these days – he will know if the Privy Council mean to go ahead against her. It is he that will take the arraignment for her trial into the king for signature, or dry-stamp it himself. He’ll take the king’s letter to the jury if he means to dictate the verdict. Sir Anthony knows everything, and he will tell Joan what is planned.’

‘Are you sure he’s on our side?’ I query. ‘Are you sure he is faithful to the side of reform?’

Nan makes a little gesture with both hands, like a woman weighing one purse against another. ‘His heart is with reform, I am sure of it,’ she says. ‘But like all of us, he wants to keep the king’s favour. He’s not going to take a single step that might turn the king against him. Before anything else he is a powerless subject at the court of . . .’

‘A tyrant,’ Catherine whispers defiantly.

‘A king,’ Nan corrects her.

‘But a king who favours us,’ I remind them.

With a new confidence I go to the king’s rooms before dinner and when I find him and his gentlemen talking of religion I give my opinion. I take good care not to be bold or proud of my learning. That’s not hard: the more that I learn, the more sure I am that I have very much to learn; but I can at least join in a conversation with those men who have taken up reformation as others take up archery – to please the king and to give themselves something to do.

‘So Tom Seymour has no wife,’ the king remarks in the middle of one of our conversations. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

It is like a physical blow to hear his name. ‘Your Majesty?’

‘I said, Tom Seymour has no wife,’ he says, raising his voice as if I am going deaf. ‘Though I gave my blessing for the marriage and the Howards told me it would go ahead at once.’

I cannot think what to say. Behind the king I see the impassive face of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, father of Mary, who should have been Thomas’s bride.

‘Was there an obstacle?’ I ask quietly as if I am moderately surprised.

‘The lady’s preference, apparently.’ The king turns to the duke. ‘Did she refuse? I’m surprised you allow a daughter such freedoms.’ The duke bows, smiling. ‘I am afraid to say that she is not an admirer of Thomas Seymour,’ he says. I grit my teeth in irritation at his sneering tone. ‘I think she is not confident of his beliefs.’

This is to imply he is a heretic. ‘Your Majesty . . .’ I start.

The duke dares to speak over me. I break off as I realise that he thinks he can interrupt me – the Queen of England – and that no-one has challenged him.

‘The Seymours are all famously in favour of reforming the church,’ Norfolk says, hissing the ‘s’ through his missing front tooth like the snake that he is. ‘From Lady Anne in the queen’s rooms, to his lordship Edward. They’re all very intent on their scholarship and their reading. They think they can instruct us all. I’m sure we should be grateful, but my daughter is more traditional. She likes to worship in the church that Your Majesty has established. She seeks no change except as you command.’ He pauses. His dark eyes flicker downwards as if he might manage to squeeze out a tear in memory of his son-in-law. ‘And she loved Henry Fitzroy with a true heart – we all did. She cannot bear another man in his place.’

The mention of his bastard son trips the king into sentimental memory. ‘Ah, don’t speak of him,’ he says. ‘I can’t bear to think of my loss. The most beautiful boy!’

‘I can’t see Thomas Seymour taking our beloved Fitzroy’s place,’ the duke says scathingly. ‘It would be a mockery.’

With mounting rage I hear the old man insult Thomas, and I see that no-one says a word to defend him.

‘No, he’s not the man our boy would have been,’ the king agrees. ‘Nobody could be.’

Nicholas Throckmorton, my cousin, comes back from Newgate with good news of Anne Askew. She has many supporters in the City of London, and warm clothes, books and money have been arriving hourly to her little room. She is certain to be released. The importance of her late father and the wealth of her husband count in her favour. She has preached before some of the greatest citizens of London and the City fathers, and she herself has done nothing worse than say what thousands of other people think. There is a general belief that the king has acted only to frighten the more vocal supporters of reform into silence, and that they will all, like Tom Howard, like George Blagge, be quietly released over the next few days.

‘Can you talk to the king?’ Nicholas asks me. ‘Ask for a pardon for her?’

‘He’s in a difficult mood,’ I confess. ‘And the churchmen are always with him.’

‘But he has definitely turned to our side?’

‘All his recent decisions are in favour of reform but he is equally irritable with everyone.’

‘Can you not advise him as you used to do?’

‘I will try,’ I promise. ‘But the conversation in his rooms is not easy as it used to be. Sometimes when I speak I feel that he is impatient with me, and sometimes he is clearly not listening.’

‘You have to keep reform in his mind,’ he says anxiously. ‘You are the only one at court now. Doctor Butts is dead, God keep him. Edward Seymour is away, Thomas, his brother, at sea, Cranmer at his palace. You are the only one left at court who can remind the king of what he passionately believed only a few months ago. I know he is changeable; but our view is his, and you are the only one who can keep him constant. It is a burden, but you are the only one at court who will defend reform. We are all looking to you.’