“I wish I could capture that radiance. You have shown me what I should do. Now I shall make some sketches.”

I raise my head, and look out of the window, and watch the blackbird as it ruffles its wings in a little scud of rain and then flies away.

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

SPRING 1545

The king summons me, and Nan and Catherine Brandon follow me along the privy gallery to his rooms. All the windows are open to the spring sunshine and the birds are singing in the trees in the gardens below. We can hear the gulls crying over the River Thames and see the bright flicker of sunlight on their white wings.

Henry is in good humor, his thickly bandaged leg resting on a stool, a pile of papers before him, each dense with type.

“See this!” he says joyfully to me. “You who think you’re such a great scholar. See this!”

I curtsey and step forward to kiss him. He takes my face in both his big hands and pulls me closer so that I kiss him on his mouth. He smells of some sort of spirits and sweets.

“I never call myself a scholar,” I say at once. “I know I am an ignorant woman compared to you, my lord. But I am glad for the chance to study. What is this?”

“It is our pages back from the printer!” he exclaims. “The liturgy at last. Cranmer says that we will put a copy into every church in England and end their mumbling away in Latin that neither the congregation nor the priest can understand. That’s not the Word of God; that’s not what I want for my church.”

“You’re right.”

“I know! And look, you can see the prayers that you have translated, and Cranmer’s work is in here, too, and I have polished it and in some parts set it into better language, and translated some parts myself. And here it is! My book.”

I take up the sheets and read the first few pages. It is beautiful, just as I hoped it would be. It is simple and clear, with a rhythm and a cadence like poetry, but there is nothing forced or overly worked about it. I look at a line that took me half a day to translate, changing one word for another, scratching it out and starting again. Now, in print, it looks as if it could never have been other, and it reads as if it has been the prayer of the English forever. I feel that deep joy of a writer seeing her work in print for the first time. The absorbing private work has become public, it has stepped out into the world. It will be judged and I am full of confidence that it is good work.