“I can’t even see him,” I say. “I can’t ask for mercy for the others because I never see him. I am afraid of what they say about me.”

He nods. “I’ll do what I can,” he says. “But perhaps you should limit your studies.”

“My books are gone,” I say bitterly. “See the empty shelves? My papers, too.”

I had hoped he would say that there was no need for me to destroy my library. But he simply asks: “And have you stopped your sermons and talks?”

“We listen only to the king’s chaplains, and their sermons are as dull as they can make them.”

“What subjects?”

“Wifely obedience,” I say dryly, but not even that makes him smile.

* * *

Hugh Latimer, ordered to appear as a suspect before the Privy Council where he had once spoken as an authority, admits that he preached a series of sermons before me—undeniable—since half the Privy Council’s wives, and some of the Privy Council themselves, attended. He does not agree that he said anything heretical, nor anything tending to reform. He says that he preached on the Word of God, and stayed inside the current teaching of the church. They release him; but the next day they arrest another preacher from my afternoon studies, Doctor Edward Crome, and they accuse him of denying the existence of purgatory.

This, he has to admit. Of course he denies the existence of purgatory. If they asked me, or indeed anyone with any sense, no one could say that there is any evidence for such a place. Heaven, yes—Our Lord speaks of it Himself—hell, yes—He harrows it for sinners. But nowhere does the Bible suggest that there is some ridiculous place where souls must wait and can be bought out of their suffering by a donation to the church or the bawling of Masses in paid chantries. There is simply no reference for this, there is no scholarship to support it. So where has this story come from? The authorship is clear: it is an invention by the church as a way of getting a great income from the suffering of bereaved families, and the fears of dying sinners. The king himself has abolished chantries—how can purgatory exist?

* * *