“Why so?” Henry asks, always tolerant of his Fool. “Jump up, Will. I can’t see you down there.”

The Fool springs up, tosses the golden ball high in the air and catches it, half singing:

Thomas must pull us all the way

Over the mountains to Germany,

For Stephen is dragging us up and down

Over the Alps to Rome.

Henry laughs. “I have my counterpoise to Gardiner,” he tells me. “I am going to get Cranmer to write an exhortation and litany in English.”

I am stunned. “An English prayer book? In English?”

“Yes, so that when people come to church they can hear the prayers in their own language and understand them. How are they to make a true confession in a language they don’t understand? How are they to truly pray if the words mean nothing to them? They stand at the back and say ‘yammer yammer yammer—amen.’”

This is exactly what I thought when I translated Bishop Fisher’s psalms from Latin to English. “What a gift to the people of England it would be!” I am almost stammering in excitement. “A prayer book in their own tongue! What a saving of souls! I should be so pleased if I were to be allowed to work on it, too!”

“And I say good morning to the queen,” Will Somers says suddenly. “Good morning to the morning queen.”

“Good morning to you, Will,” I reply. “Is this a joke?”

“It is a morning joke. And the king’s idea is the plan for this morning. After dinner you will find it quite different. This morning we send for Cranmer, tonight—heigh-ho—it will be my lord Gardiner who is the fount of all knowledge, and you will be the morning queen and quite out of your time.”

“Hush, Fool,” Henry says. “What do you think, Kateryn?”

Despite Will’s warning, I cannot resist speaking. “I think it is an opportunity to write something both true and beautiful,” I say enthusiastically. “And something that is beautifully written must lead people to God.”

“But it cannot be ornamental,” Henry insists. “It cannot be a false god. It has to be a true translation from the Latin, not a poem grafted on it.”

“It must be the Word,” I say. “The Lord spoke in simple language to simple people. Our church must do the same. But I think there is great beauty in simple language.”

“Why don’t you write some new prayers yourself?” Henry asks suddenly. “Write in your own hand?”

For a moment I wonder if he knows of my book of translated psalms published without a name on the cover. I wonder if his spies have told him that I have already translated prayers and discussed them with the archbishop. I stammer. “No, no, I could not presume...”