“Your only safety is in his love for you. He does still love you?”

I make the tiniest gesture, of denial. “Thomas, I don’t know that he has ever loved anyone. I don’t know that he can.”

* * *

Thomas and I cross the king’s presence room filled with petitioners, lawyers, doctors and hangers-on watching our footsteps, estimating our confidence at every stride. He pauses at the door of the king’s privy chamber.

“I can’t bear to leave you here,” he says unhappily.

Hundreds of people watch us as I give him a cool smile. I extend my hand to him.

He bows, touching my fingers with his warm lips. “You are a brilliant woman,” he says quietly. “You have read and thought more than most of the men in there. You are a loving woman and you believe in God and speak to Him far more intensely and sincerely than they ever will. You can surely explain yourself to the king. You are the most beautiful woman at court, by far the most desirable. You can rekindle his love for you.”

He bows formally, and I turn and go into the king’s rooms.

* * *

They are in the middle of a discussion about chantries and monasteries. To my speechless amazement, I realize that they are agreeing how many religious houses—closed at such cost and with such heartbreak—might be reopened and restored. Bishop Gardiner believes we need monasteries and convents in every town to keep the country peaceful and the people supplied with religious solace and comforts. The corrupt marketplaces that traded in fear and superstition, which the king rightly closed, are now to reopen, as if there had never been a reformation in England. And they are to return to the business of selling lies at a profit. As I come in, Stephen Gardiner is suggesting the restoration of some shrines and some pilgrim routes. Slyly, he suggests that they might pay their fees directly to the crown, not to the church—as if that makes them holy. He says that it is possible to do God’s work at a profit. I sit quietly beside Henry, fold my hands in my lap, and listen to this wicked man suggest the restoration of superstition and paganism to the country in order that poor people might be robbed by the rich.