“My liturgy, in my church.” For the king, it is ownership that gives him joy. “My church, in my kingdom. I have to be both king and pope in England. I have to guard the people from enemies outside and lead them to God within.”

Nan and Catherine give a little impressed murmur of awe. They know every phrase and passage, having passed it from one hand to another, improving and polishing the phrasing, reading Thomas Cranmer’s changes aloud for him, checking my words with me.

“You can take this,” the king says grandly. “You can read these pages and check them for foolish mistakes by the printer’s boys. And you can tell me what you think of this, my greatest work.”

One of his pages steps forward and gathers up the pile of papers. “Mind,” the king says, wagging a finger at me, “I want your real opinion, nothing designed to please me. All I ever want from you is the truth, Kateryn.”

I curtsey as the guards hold the doors open for us. “I will read with attention and give you my true opinion,” I promise. “This will be the hundredth time I have read these words and I hope to read them a thousand times. Indeed, all of England will read them a thousand times, they will be read every day in church.”

“You must always speak honestly to me,” he says warmly. “You are my helpmeet and my partner. You are my queen. We will go forward together, Kateryn, leading the people from darkness into light.”

* * *

Nan, Catherine, and I say not a word until we are back in the safety of my rooms and the door is shut.

“How wonderful!” Catherine exclaims. “That the king should put his own name to the work. Stephen Gardiner can say nothing against it if it is under the king’s own seal of approval. How you are leading him, Your Majesty! How far we are going towards true grace!”

Nan spreads the pages out on the table and I take up a pen to mark any errors when a sudden quiet tap on the little door that leads directly from the stable stairs makes us look up. The preachers who wish to enter discreetly use this door by appointment; perhaps a bookseller with a book that one of Gardiner’s spies would name as heretical. All other visitors, great and small, visitors of state and petitioners, come up the broad public stairs and are announced at my presence chamber, as the huge double doors swing open.

“See who it is,” I say quietly, and Nan goes to the door and opens it. The guard who stands below, at the bottom of the stair, watches as a young man comes in and bows to me and to Joan Denny.