“Nowhere in the Bible does it say that marriage is a sacrament,” Anne replies. “It was not God who joined us together. The priest says it was; but this is not true. This is the word of the church, not the Bible. Our wedding, like every wedding, was an act of man, not of God. It was not a holy sacrament. My father forced me into an agreement with Thomas, and when I was old enough and had understanding enough I revoked that agreement. I claim the right to be a free woman, with a soul equal to any man under God.”

Anne of Cleves—another woman who was married with no choice, and divorced against her will—gives Anne Askew a little smile.

* * *

Thomas Cranmer goes home in triumph to codify the agreed reforms into a new law to put before Parliament; but the king sends a message after to him to tell him to stop his work and do nothing.

“I had to halt Thomas in his tracks the moment that I heard from Stephen Gardiner,” he says to me as we watch a game of tennis at the royal court. The conversation is punctuated by the loud thwack of the racquet on the ball and then the delay as the ball rolls down the roof to fall into the court below, and the players run into position to hit it again. I think that the king’s religious policy is like this—a great advance in one direction and then an immediate return.

“Gardiner says he is very near to a treaty with the emperor at Bruges, but the emperor insists there are to be no new changes to the Church in England. I don’t dance to his piping—don’t think that. But it’s worth my while to delay reform to please the emperor. I don’t want to upset him now. I have to measure what I do, measure like a philosopher, all the time, every little change. The emperor wants a treaty with me so that he is safe to attack the Lutherans in his empire, especially Germany.”

“If only—” I begin.

“He’ll wipe them out, burn them all as heretics if he can.” He smiles. He is always attracted by ruthless means. “He says he will stop at nothing to stamp them out. And where will you get your heretical books from then, my dear?”

I stammer a denial, but the king is not listening to me.

“The emperor needs my help. He wants us to be at peace with France so that he can get on with knocking the Germans into orthodoxy. Of course he doesn’t want me stepping any further from the papists as he defends the pope’s church.”