“Yes. I don’t mean to say that she didn’t suffer. Just that she did not... cook.”

At Nan’s simple words I choke on vomit. I put my head on the table among the silver hairbrush and the silver comb and I heave, spilling bile on the table, over the silver brushes and glass bottles.

I get up and turn from the table. Wordlessly, Susan clears up, brings me a cloth to wipe my face, small ale for me to rinse and spit. Two maids scurry in behind her and wipe my vomit from the floor. Then I sit again before my looking glass and see the whey face of the woman that Anne Askew died to save.

Nan waits for me to catch my breath.

“I am telling you now, because the king will know that it has been done according to his orders. When he comes to your rooms this evening, he will know that the greatest woman in England has been burned today, and they are sweeping up her ashes from the cobbles of Smithfield as we walk in to dinner.”

I raise my head. “This is unbearable.”

“Unbearable,” she agrees.

* * *

Catherine Brandon returns to court so pale that nobody doubts her story that she was sick. She comes to my room. “She didn’t mention your name,” she said. “Not when they gave her a chance to get off the fire. Not even then. Nicholas Throckmorton attended and she met his eye and she smiled at him and nodded as if to say that we had nothing to fear.”

“She smiled?”

“She said ‘Amen’ to the prayers and smiled. He said the crowd was horrified at her death. There were no cheers, just a long low groan. He said that this will be the last woman preacher burned in England. The people won’t stand for it.”

We are waiting in my presence chamber and half the court is here already. The king is wheeled in beaming. We all curtsey, and I take my place beside the chair. He extends his hand, and I take it. The grip is so warm and wet that for a moment I imagine that he has blood on his hands, but then I see it is a flicker of red light from the stained-glass windows.

“All well?” he asks brightly, though he must know that I have learned of Anne’s death.

“All well,” I say quietly, and we go in to dinner.

HAMPTON COURT PALACE,

SUMMER 1546