‘I was sure I would be arrested, but I was told only to keep my mouth shut. Which I have, until you came yesterday. I do not understand why I have not been arrested. But Sir Anthony was very mild with me, and there have been rumours in the Tower that he was so concerned at what Rich and Wriothesley had done, that he privately told the King. But I do not know.’

I considered. Perhaps nothing had happened to Myldmore because if he were put on trial for revealing Anne Askew’s torture, that would involve admitting publicly that it had taken place.

‘Did Sir Anthony Knevet enquire about your motives?’ I asked. ‘Your religious associations?’

‘Yes. He asked about my church, my associates. But I did not tell him about Master Greening or his group. That would be the end of me because of – because of the book. And I had said nothing about that.’

‘I think it is time to tell me, Master Myldmore.’

He looked down at his hands, then raised his head again. ‘On the day I spoke with Mistress Askew, I was sent again, late in the evening, to take her supper, and to report on how she fared. When I went into the cell I found she was still on the floor, but had managed to drag herself half across the room. Jesu knows what that cost her. A candle had been brought in and she was sprawled next to her chest, which was open. She had managed to take out a bundle of papers, which lay on her lap, with an inkwell and a quill. She was writing, sweating and wincing with the effort. She looked up at me. There was silence for a moment, and then she said, in a strange tone of determined merriment, “Goodman gaoler! You have found me at my letters.”

‘I laid the bowl of pottage close beside her, and in so doing saw what she had written: “. . . then the lieutenant caused me to be loosed from the rack. Incontinently I swooned, and then they recovered me again . . .”

‘I said, “That letter will not be allowed out, madam, it says too much.”

‘“A shame,” she said. “It contains the whole truth.”