‘I told her the arrangements made,’ Cranmer says, ‘for the annulment hearing. I told her it will be at Lambeth, it will be tomorrow. She said, will the king be there? I said no, madam, he sends his proctors. She said, he is busy with Seymour, and then she reproached herself, saying, I should not speak against Henry, should I? I said, it would be unwise. She said to me, may I come there to Lambeth, to speak for myself? I said no, there is no need, proctors have been appointed for you too. She seemed downcast. But then she said, tell me what the king wants me to sign. Whatever the king wants, I will agree. He may allow me to go to France, to a convent. Does he want me to say I was wed to Harry Percy? I said to her, madam, the earl denies it. And she laughed.’

He looks doubtful. Even the fullest disclosure, even a complete and detailed admission of guilt, it would not help her, not now, though it might have helped before the trial. The king doesn’t want to think about her lovers, past or present. He has wiped them out of his mind. And her too. She would not credit the extent to which Henry has erased her. He said yesterday, ‘I hope these arms of mine will soon receive Jane.’

Cranmer says, ‘She cannot imagine that the king has abandoned her. It is not yet a month since he made the Emperor’s ambassador bow to her.’

‘I think he did that for his own sake. Not for hers.’

‘I don’t know,’ Cranmer says. ‘I thought he loved her. I thought there was no estrangement between them, up until the last. I am forced to think I don’t know anything. Not about men. Not about women. Not about my faith, nor the faith of others. She said to me, “Shall I go to Heaven? Because I have done many good deeds in my time.”’

She has made the same enquiry of Kingston. Perhaps she is asking everybody.

‘She talks of works.’ Cranmer shakes his head. ‘She says nothing of faith. And I hoped she understood, as I now understand, that we are saved, not by our works, but only through Christ’s sacrifice, and through his merits, not our own.’

‘Well, I do not think you should conclude that she was a papist all this time. What would it have availed her?’

‘I am sorry for you,’ Cranmer says. ‘That you should have the responsibility of uncovering it all.’

‘I did not know what I would find, when I began. That is the only reason I could do it, because I was surprised at every turn.’ He thinks of Mark’s boasting, of the gentlemen before the court twitching away from each other, and evading each other’s eyes; he has learned things about human nature that even he never knew. ‘Gardiner in France is clamouring to know the details, but I find I do not want to write the particulars, they are so abominable.’