I hold the little canary up to the open window so that he can see the blue sky. “They can go, William. They can all go. Indeed, they had better go. I don’t know how long I will be here to care for them.”

* * *

I am dressed in complete silence, my ladies handing me my things without a word, in well-practiced choreography. I don’t know how to reach Anne Askew behind the thick stone walls of the Tower. It is the prison for enemies who will not be freed for years, for the gravest traitors, for evil people who have to be held without any chance of escape. For a prisoner, to enter through the watergate, concealed from the City and from all the people who might rise up to defend him, is to set sail on the River Lethe—towards oblivion.

At the heart of my fear for Anne is that I don’t know why they would move her from Newgate to the Tower. She has been arraigned for heresy, she has been questioned by the Privy Council, why do they not leave her at Newgate until they send her for trial, or grant her pardon and send her home? Why would they move her to the Tower? What is the point of it? And who has ordered it?

Nan comes forward and curtseys as Catherine stands behind me and fastens my necklace. The priceless sapphires are heavy and cold on my neck. They make me shiver.

“What is it, Nan?”

“It’s Bette,” she says, naming one of my younger maids-in-waiting.

“What about her?” I ask shortly.

“Her mother has written to me and asked for her to be sent home,” she says. “I have taken the liberty of saying that she can go.”

“Is she ill?” I ask.

Nan shakes her head with a pursed mouth, as if she would say more but she is angry.

“So what’s the matter with her?”

There is an embarrassed silence.

“Her father is a tenant of Bishop Gardiner,” Catherine Brandon remarks.

I take a moment to understand her. “You think the bishop has advised Bette’s parents to remove her from my keeping?”

Nan nods. Catherine curtseys and leaves the room to wait for me outside.

“He’d never admit to it,” Nan says. “So there’s no point in challenging him.’

“But why would Bette leave me? Even if he advised it?”

“I’ve seen it before,” Nan says. “When Kitty Howard was charged. The younger maids, those who didn’t have to stay to give evidence, all found excuses to go home. The court shrank like linen on a washday. Same as when the king turned against Queen Anne. All the Boleyns disappeared overnight.”