‘Will?’ I said, coming to meet him.

‘Child.’ His habitual sweet smile came readily to his lips but his eyes were still dark.

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Ah, I wasn’t praying for me,’ he said shortly.

‘Then who?’

He glanced around the empty chapel and then drew me into a pew. ‘D’you have any influence with Her Grace, d’you think, Hannah?’

I thought for a moment, then honestly, regretfully, I shook my head. ‘She listens only to Cardinal Pole and to the king,’ I said. ‘And before everyone, to her own conscience.’

‘If you spoke from your gift, would she listen to you?’

‘She might,’ I said cautiously. ‘But I cannot command it to serve me, Will, you know that.’

‘I thought you might pretend,’ he said bluntly.

I recoiled. ‘It’s a holy gift! It would be blasphemy to pretend!!’

‘Child, this month there are three men of God in prison charged with heresy, and if I am not mistaken they will be taken out and burned to death: poor Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Latimer, and Bishop Ridley.’

I waited.

‘The queen cannot burn good men who are ordained bishops of her father’s church,’ the fool said flatly. ‘This must not happen.’

He looked at me and he put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me. ‘Tell her that you have had a gift of Sight and that they must be sent into exile,’ he urged me. ‘Hannah, if these men die then the queen will make an enemy of every man of compassion. These are good men, honourable men, her father’s own appointments. They have not changed their faith, the world has changed around them. They must not die on the queen’s order, she will be shamed forever if she does this. History will remember nothing but that she was the queen who burned bishops.’

I hesitated. ‘I dare not, Will.’

‘If you will do it, I will be there,’ he promised me. ‘I’ll help you. We’ll get through it somehow.’

‘You told me yourself never to meddle,’ I whispered urgently. ‘You told me yourself never to try to change the mind of the king. Your master beheaded two wives, never mind bishops, and you didn’t stop him.’

‘And he’ll be remembered as a wife-killer,’ Will predicted. ‘And everything else about him that was so brave and loyal and true will be forgot. They will forget that he brought peace and prosperity to the country, that he made an England that we could all love. All they will remember of him will be that he had six wives and beheaded two of them.

‘And all they will remember of this queen is that she brought the country floods and famine and fire. She will be remembered as England’s curse when she was to have been our virgin queen, England’s saviour.’

‘She won’t listen to me . . .’

‘She must listen,’ he insisted. ‘Or she will be despised and forgotten and they will remember—God knows who! Elizabeth! Mary Stuart!—some wanton girl instead of this true-hearted queen.’