I turn to Nan, standing white-faced with Catherine at the door. “See this,” I say wonderingly. “Nan, see what he has done now. See what he wants to do to me.” I hand it to her.

Silently she reads it; she tries to speak, but her mouth opens and closes and she says nothing. Catherine takes it out of her powerless hands and reads it in silence, and then raises her eyes and looks at me.

“This is Gardiner’s work,” Catherine says after a long while.

Doctor Wendy nods. “He named you as a treasonous heretic,” he says. “He said you were a serpent in the king’s bosom.”

“It’s not enough that I am Eve, the mother of all sin; now I have to be the serpent as well?” I demand fiercely.

Doctor Wendy nods.

“He has no evidence!” I say.

“They don’t need evidence.” Doctor Wendy states the obvious. “Bishop Gardiner says that the religion you speak for denies lords, denies kings, says that all men are equal. Your faith is the same as sedition, he says.”

“I have done nothing to deserve death,” I say. I can hear my voice shake and I press my lips together.

“Neither did any of the others,” says Catherine.

“The bishop said that anyone who spoke as you do, with justice, by law, would deserve death. Those were his very words.”

“When are they coming?” Nan interrupts.

“Coming?” I don’t understand her.

“To arrest her?” she asks the doctor. “What’s the plan? When are they coming? And where will they take her?”

Practical as always, she goes to the cupboard and takes out my purse, and looks for a box to pack my things. Her hands are shaking so much that she cannot turn the key in the lock. I put both hands on her shoulders, as if to stop Nan preparing for my arrest will prevent the yeomen coming for me.

“The Lord Chancellor is ordered to come for her. He’ll take her to the Tower. I don’t know when. I don’t know when she’ll be tried.”

At the words the Tower I find that my knees give way beneath me, and Nan guides me into a chair. I bend over till my head stops swimming and Catherine gives me a glass of small ale. It tastes old and stale. I think of Thomas Wriothesley spending all night racking Anne Askew in the Tower, and then coming to my rooms to take me there.

“I have to go,” Catherine says shortly. “I have two fatherless boys. I have to leave you.”

“Don’t go!”

“I have to,” she says.

Silently, Nan tips her head towards the door to tell her to leave. Catherine curtseys very low. “God bless you,” she says. “God keep you. Good-bye.”

The door closes behind her and I realize that she has said farewell to a dying woman.

“How did you come by this?” Nan asks Doctor Wendy.