“I’ll speak to him,” I say. “I’ll do everything I can. But you know...”

She nods, she knows. “I know. But tell him. Speak for me.”

* * *

That afternoon we have a sermon on the vanity of war, a powerful piece of reasoning from one of the London preachers. He argues that all Christians should live in peace, for whatever their way of worshipping God they are all praying to the one God. Jews also should not be persecuted since their God is our God—though we have a greater insight into Him. He reminds us that Our Savior was born of a Jewish mother. He Himself was born a Jew. Even Muslims, in their benighted darkness, should not be attacked, because they too acknowledge the God of the Bible.

This is so strange and so radical that I check that the doors are locked and the sentries standing out of earshot, keeping all strangers at a distance, before we enter into a discussion. The preacher, Peter Lascombe, defends his thesis and appeals to the brotherhood of man. “And the sisterhood,” he says, smiling, though this too is a great claim. I think it must be heretical. He says that, as in Spain in the old days, when the country was ruled by Muslim kings, everyone who believes in God should respect the others’ faiths. The enemy should be those who don’t believe in God at all and refuse to accept His Word: pagans and fools.

He takes my hand when it is time for him to go and bows over it. I feel between my fingers a little scrap of paper, double-folded. I let him go without a word and tell my ladies that I shall work at my studies for the next hour in silence, and I sit at my table and open my books. Unseen, hidden behind the great folios, I unwrap the note. It is from Anne Askew:

I write to tell you that a man came to me saying he was a servant of the Privy Council and asked me when I have preached before you and if you deny the Mass. I will say nothing.I will mention no names, I will never say yours. A.

I rise from my seat and stand before the small fire that brightens the room as the afternoon grows dark. I hold out my hands as if to warm them and flick the little scrap of paper into the heart of the embers where it flames and curls into ash. I notice how cold I feel and that my hands are shaking.