“They’ve been questioning Anne Askew,” she says bluntly. “They have tortured her.”

I am so appalled I cannot speak. “Tortured her? The daughter of a gentleman of the realm? Nan, they can’t have done so!”

“They’ve lost their minds. They were authorized by the king to question her. He told them that they could take her out of Newgate Prison and frighten her into confession, but they took her to the Tower and they put her on the rack.”

The terrible pictures of my dream come back to me. The woman with the feet turned outwards, with a hollow where her shoulders should be. “Don’t say it.”

“I’m afraid it’s true. I think they must have shown her the rack and then her courage enraged them and they couldn’t resist it. When she wouldn’t say anything, they went on and on; they couldn’t stop themselves. The constable of the Tower was so appalled that he left them to it and reported it to the king. He said that they had thrown off their jackets in the torture room and racked her themselves. They pushed aside the hangman to do it. One at her head, one at her feet, they turned the wheels. They didn’t want the hangman to do it, it wasn’t enough for them to watch, they wanted to hurt her. When the king heard that from the constable, he commanded that they stop.”

“He has pardoned her? He had her released?”

“Not him,” she says bitterly. “He only said that they might not rack her. But, Kat, by the time the constable had got back to the Tower, they had been working on her all night. They carried on while the constable rode to see the king. They did not stop till he came back and told them.”

I am silent. “Hours?”

“It must have been hours. She’ll never walk again. All the bones in her feet and hands will be broken, her shoulders, her knees her hips will be dislocated. They will have broken her spine or pulled it apart.”

Again I see the image from my dream of the woman with her wrists pulled from her arms, her arms detached at the elbow, the strange hollow where her shoulders should have been, her strange poise trying to hold her dislocated neck. I can hardly speak.

“But they have released her now?”

“No. They pulled her off the rack and dropped her on the floor.”

“She’s still there? In the Tower? With her arms and legs torn from their sockets?”

Nan nods, looking blankly at me.

“Who was it?” I spit. “Name them.”

“I don’t know for sure. Richard Rich was one. And Wriothesley.”

“The Lord Chancellor of England racked a lady, in the Tower? With his own hands?”

At my appalled face she only nods.

“Has he gone mad? Have they all run mad?”

“I think they must be.”

“No woman has ever been racked! No gentlewoman!”

“They were determined to know.”

“About her faith?”