“Why should not a woman leave a marriage? If she can make it, surely she can unmake it,” Anne Askew replies. “What was sworn can be unsworn. The king himself—”

“We don’t speak of the king,” Nan says swiftly.

“The law does not recognize a woman except when she is alone in the world,” Anne Askew says authoritatively. “Only a woman without father or husband has any legal rights in this world. That, in itself, is unjust. But think of this: I am a woman alone, a feme sole. My father is dead and I deny my husband. The law must deal with me as an adult equal person as I am before God. I will go to heaven because I have read and accepted the Word of God. I demand justice because I have read and accepted the word of the law.”

Nan exchanges a quick worried look with me. “I don’t know the rights and the wrongs of this,” she says. “But I know it is not a fit discourse for a queen’s household.” She glances at Princess Elizabeth, who is listening carefully. “Not for young ears.”

I shake my head. I am married to a man who declares his own annulments. He is divorced when he says it is so. Anne Askew suggests that a woman might claim as much power as the king.

“You had better speak of your faith,” I command her. “I have translated Psalm 145: All things be under Thy dominion and rule. Speak of that to us.”

She bows her head as if to gather her thoughts for a moment, and then she speaks simply and eloquently, and in her voice I hear the ring of complete conviction, and in her face I see the shine of innocence.

She stays all the morning and I send her home with a purse of coins and an invitation to come again. I am fascinated by her, inspired by this woman who says that she can choose where she lives, choose or reject a husband, this woman who knows that God forgives her sins, because she confesses them to Him—not to a priest—she speaks to Him directly. I think this is the first woman I have ever met who strikes me as being one who makes her own life, who walks her own path, who is responsible for herself. This is a woman who has not been tamed to be as others want; she has not been cut down to fit her circumstances.

* * *

The portrait painter comes to finish his sketches of the two princesses. I think that Princess Mary stands straighter and taller than usual, as if she knows that this may be her likeness as an English princess, as if it is her last portrait before she is sent away. Perhaps she thinks that this portrait will be copied and sent to her proposed husbands.