“What about our cousin Nicholas Throckmorton? He can go and speak with her,” Nan suggests. “He knows the law, and he is a good Christian of the reform faith. He must have listened to her speak in your rooms a dozen times. He should go and see what can be done and we can speak to Joan, Anthony Denny’s wife. Anthony is in constant attendance on the king these days—he will know if the Privy Council mean to go ahead against her. It is he who will take the arraignment for her trial into the king for signature, or dry-stamp it himself. He’ll take the king’s letter to the jury if he means to dictate the verdict. Sir Anthony knows everything, and he will tell Joan what is planned.”

“Are you sure he’s on our side?” I query. “Are you sure he is faithful to the side of reform?”

Nan makes a little gesture with both hands, like a woman weighing one purse against another. “His heart is with reform, I am sure of it,” she says. “But like all of us, he wants to keep the king’s favor. He’s not going to take a single step that might turn the king against him. Before anything else he is a powerless subject at the court of—”

“A tyrant,” Catherine whispers defiantly.

“A king,” Nan corrects her.

“But a king who favors us,” I remind them.

* * *

With a new confidence I go to the king’s rooms before dinner and when I find him and his gentlemen talking of religion I give my opinion. I take good care not to be bold or proud of my learning. That’s not hard: the more that I learn, the more sure I am that I have very much to learn; but I can at least join in a conversation with those men who have taken up reformation as others take up archery—to please the king and to give themselves something to do.

“So Tom Seymour has no wife,” the king remarks in the middle of one of our conversations. “Who’d have thought it?”

It is like a physical blow to hear his name. “Your Majesty?”

“I said, Tom Seymour has no wife,” he says, raising his voice as if I am going deaf. “Though I gave my blessing for the marriage and the Howards told me it would go ahead at once.”

I cannot think what to say. Behind the king I see the impassive face of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, father of Mary, who should have been Thomas’s bride.

“Was there an obstacle?” I ask quietly as if I am moderately surprised.

“The lady’s preference, apparently.” The king turns to the duke. “Did she refuse? I’m surprised you allow a daughter such freedoms.”