Stephen Gardiner supplies all the books for the king’s nighttime reading, it is a most limited library; but I am not allowed to read anything else, and so I find myself having to recite pious arguments for the unity of the church under the pope, or fanciful histories of the earliest church that stress the importance of the patriarchs and the Holy Father. If I believed these orthodox writings, I would think that there were no women in the world at all, certainly no women saints in the early church laying down their lives for their faith. Bishop Gardiner is now a great enthusiast for the Eastern Church, which is a full member of the Catholic communion but not subservient to the pope. The Greek Church is to be our model and I read long sermons that suggest the fine level of purity that can be achieved in a Catholic church in partnership with Rome. I have to declare that people should be kept in sanctified ignorance and that it is best that they say their prayers and have no idea what the words mean. Knowingly, I recite nonsense, and I despise Bishop Gardiner for dictating lies.

Henry listens; sometimes his eyes close and I see that I have read him to sleep, sometimes the pain keeps him alert. He never comments on my reading, except to ask me to repeat a sentence. He never asks me if I agree with the plodding arguments against reform, and I take care to make no comment. In the quietness of the nighttime room I can hear the little gurgle as the pus drains from his leg and drips into the bowl. He is shamed by the stink, and struggles with the pain. I cannot help him with either, except to offer him the draft that the physicians leave to drug him into sleep, and to assure him that I hardly smell anything. The rooms are laden with dried rose petals and the sharp scent of lavender heads, and in every corner there are bowls filled with the oil of roses, but still the stench of death seeps like a fog into everything.

Some nights he hardly sleeps at all. Some days he does not get up, but hears Mass in his bed, and his advisors and councillors meet in the chamber that adjoins his bedroom, with the door open so that he can hear them speak.