His face is pale with fear. “That he didn’t tell me, Your Majesty. But he was bold as brass: that I was to go through all your papers and bring him whatever I could find. He said to copy down the titles of books also, and to search for a New Testament. He said that he knew you had several.”

“There’s nothing here,” I say shortly.

“I know. I know that you have sent everything away, your beautiful library and all your papers. I told him there was nothing, but he said to look anyway. He knew that you had a library for your studies. He said that they guessed you wouldn’t have been able to part with your books and that they would be hidden in your rooms somewhere.”

“You have been very fair and honorable to tell me this,” I say. “I shall see that you are rewarded, William.”

He bows his head. “I don’t seek any reward.”

“Will you go back to this man and say that you have looked and that I have nothing?”

“I will.”

I put out my hand to him, and as he bows and kisses it I see that my fingers are trembling and the little bird on my other hand is shaking as he clings to my thumb. “You don’t even think as I do, William. You are kind to protect me when we don’t even agree.”

“We may not agree, Your Majesty, but I think you should be free to think and write and study,” he says. “Even though you are a woman. Even if you listen to a woman preacher.”

“God bless you, William, in whatever language He chooses, whether through a priest or through your own good heart.”

He bows. “And the woman preacher...” he says very quietly.

I turn in the doorway. “Mistress Askew?”

“They have moved her from Newgate.”

The relief is tremendous. I cry out. “Oh! God be praised! She is released?”

“No. No, God help her. They have taken her to the Tower.”

There is a moment of blank silence as he sees that I understand what he is saying. They have not released her into the custody of her husband; they have not bound her over to keep the peace. Instead, they have moved her from the prison where they keep the common criminals, to the prison where they keep those accused of treason and heresy, near to Tower Hill where they hang the guilty, not far from Smithfield meat market where they burn the heretics.

I turn to the window behind me, and I unlatch it and swing it open.

“Your Majesty?” William gestures to the open cages, to the parrot on his perch. “Your Majesty? Take care...”