She smiles at me. “No, I am a simple woman,” she corrects me. “When I understand something true, it goes to my heart. I have understood this: that we have to read and know the Word of God. This, and nothing else, will bring us to heaven. All the rest of it: the threat of purgatory, the promise of forgiveness in return for payment, the statues that bleed and the pictures that leak milk, all these things are the invention of a church that has gone far from the Word of God. It is for me, and for those who care about truth, to cling to the Word of God and turn our face from the masquing. The church does not put on mystery plays once a year anymore, it plays them every day all the year. It is all costume and show and pretense. But the Bible is the truth and there is nothing but the Bible.”

I nod. She speaks simply, but she is absolutely right.

“So I came in the end to London, and spoke before the great men of this city. My brother helped me, and my sister is Mrs. Jane Saint Paul, whose husband serves the duchess.” She curtseys to Catherine Brandon, who nods her head in reply. “I found a safe house with honest kinsmen who think as I do, and I listened to preachers and spoke with many learned men, far more learned than me. And a good man, a preacher that you know, I think, Your Majesty, John Lascelles, took me to meet other good men and speak with them.”

An almost imperceptible breath from Nan tells me that she knows the name. I glance at her.

“He bore witness against Queen Katherine,” she says.

“I have met a few people of your court,” Anne goes on, looking around and smiling. “Lady Denny and Lady Hertford. And others listen to gospelers and believe in the reform of the church.” She takes a breath. “And then I went to the church for a divorce,” she says.

Nan gives a little scream of shock. “How? How could you?”

“I went to the church and I said that since my husband was a believer in the old ways and I am for the new, we never made vows that meant the same thing. We did not join hands in the same church, the true God can have nothing to do with the vows that they made me swear, in a language that I didn’t understand, and so our marriage should be dissolved.”

“Mistress Anne, a woman can’t get her marriage dissolved at will,” Catherine protests.

Nan and I exchange glances. Our own brother’s wife ran away from him and he was awarded a divorce as a gift from the king. The king is head of the church; marriage and divorce are in his gift, they are not for a woman to take.