I come across Will Somers as I walk alone in the green allée beneath the castle walls. I long, with a wordless ache in my heart, for Thomas; I worry for Anne Askew, still held without trial and without charge; and I wish that the king would listen to me once more as the friend and helpmeet that I swore to be. Will is sprawled, as long-limbed as a fawn, under a spreading oak tree, dappled with shade, in one of the little gardens set between the high hedges, and when he sees me he unwinds his long legs, rises to his feet, bows, and folds himself up again like a jointed puppet.

“How d’you like the heat, Will?” I ask.

“Better than I would like hell,” he replies. “Or do you doubt hell along with everything else, Your Majesty?”

I glance around, but there is no one but the two of us in the walled garden. “You want to discuss theology with me?”

“Not I!” he says. “You’re too clever for me. And I’m not the only one.”

“You’re not the only one not to want to discuss theology?”

He nods, lays his finger along his nose and beams at me.

“Who else does not want to talk with me?”

“Your Majesty,” he says grandly. “I am just a Fool. So I don’t discuss the king’s church with him. But if I were a wise man (and I wake every day to thank the Lord that I am not) I would be dead by now. For if I had been a wise man with serious opinions, I would have succumbed to the temptation to discuss these grave matters. Grave because that is where they lead.”

“His Majesty has always enjoyed scholarly talk,” I say repressively.

“Not anymore,” Will says. “In my opinion. Which is to say a Fool’s opinion and so not worth having.”

As I open my mouth to argue, Will very slowly and carefully goes into a handstand so that he is balancing on his hands and his feet walk languidly up the trunk of the tree. “See what a Fool I am,” he remarks, head down.

“I think you are wiser than you appear, Will,” I remark. “But there are good people whose safety depends on me speaking for them. I have promised to keep the king in one mind.”

“It is easier to stand on your head than keep the king to one mind,” Will observes, straight as a yeoman, but upside down. “If I were you, Majesty, I would stand on your head beside me.”

* * *