“But at the same time the service of the Mass is to be unchanged, with all the bobbing and bowing and ducking. And the bread and wine is to be regarded as the true body and blood. And it is heresy to question this.”

I look at her with a sort of despair. “What does your husband think that the king actually believes? In his heart?”

She shrugs. “Nobody knows. It is half Lutheranism and half Catholic, it is papist with the king as pope, it is Lutheranism with the king as Luther. It has become a religion quite of his own making. That’s why he has to keep explaining it to us. And so heresy, too, is what he says it is. We are all of us—papists and Protestants, Lutherans and gospelers alike—in danger.”

“But what does he believe? Anne, we have to know. What does the king believe?”

“All sorts of things, all at once.”

* * *

The king comes home very tired, and sends for me to visit him in his rooms. They have already put him to bed, and I hesitate on the threshold, wondering if he intended me to come in my nightgown, to bed him.

He beckons me in. “Come in,” he says. “Sit with me. I want to tell you all about it before I sleep. You will have heard that they were in awe of me at Westminster? They wept as I told them I was their father and I would have command of them. They said that they had never heard such a speech before.”

“How wonderful,” I say faintly. “And how good you are to make the effort to go out to them, and on Christmas Eve as well.”

He waves a fat hand. “I wanted them to know my mind,” he says. “It is important that they are clear. I think for them, I decide for them, they must know what I am thinking. How else are they to find their way through life? How else get to heaven?”

The door behind me opens and the first of the servers comes in with a platter and a spoon and knife. The king is to be served his dinner in bed. One after another the men come in with dish after dish. Henry piles food on his platter as they wrap a great linen napkin under his chin to keep the bedclothes from being spattered with juices from the meats and sauces. I am served in my seat at a table at the foot of the great bed and I eat slowly, so that we may finish our meal together. Henry’s plate is constantly replenished and he drinks at least three bottles of wine, the meal takes forever, and when he waves the last dish away he throws himself back against the pillows, exhausted and sweating. I am nauseous just from watching the huge plates of food come andgo.