“The pope has sent a diplomat, here? To our court? After all that has gone before?”

“Yes,” she says shortly.

“This is impossible,” I say hastily. The king has been excommunicated for years. He called the pope the antichrist. How can it be that he is now entertaining his messenger?

“Apparently the pope is going to receive the English Church back into communion with Rome. They just have to agree to the details.”

“We become Roman Catholic again?” I mutter incredulously. “After all the suffering? Despite all the advances that we have made, despite the sacrifices?”

“Are you not hungry, my love?” Henry booms from my left side.

I turn quickly and smile. “Oh, yes,” I say.

“The venison is very fine.” He nods to the server. “Give the queen more venison.”

I pause while the dark meat is served to my golden plate, the thick dark gravy poured.

“The flesh of the doe is always sweeter than that of the buck,” Henry winks at me.

“I am glad to see you are in such good spirits, my lord husband.”

“I am at play,” Henry says. His gaze follows mine to where the emissary of the pope sits quietly at the table, eating with relish. “And I alone understand the game.”

* * *

“You are to be congratulated,” Edward Seymour says to me thinly as my court of ladies is walking beside the river before the day gets too hot. His lordship is home from Boulogne, relieved of command at last, and taking up his influence at the Privy Council once again. Lord Wriothesley has not recovered from his scolding in the king’s garden, Stephen Gardiner has been very quiet, the papal messenger has gone home with only the vaguest of promises, and we all hope that the forces of reform are quietly taking the upper hand once more. I should be glad.

“I am?”

“You have managed something that no previous wife has done.”

I glance around but Edward Seymour is not likely to be indiscreet, and nobody is listening. “I have?”

“You displeased the king and then you won his forgiveness. You are a clever woman, Your Majesty. Your experience is unique.”

I bow my head. I cannot speak of it. I am shamed, I am unspeakably shamed. And Anne Askew is dead.

“You manage him,” he says. “You are a formidable diplomat.”

I can feel myself flush at the memory. I do not need Edward to remind me of that night. I will never forget it. I feel as if I will never raise my head up from what I did. I cannot bear that Edward should even speculate about what I did to get the king to tear up the warrant for my arrest. “His Majesty is merciful,” I say quietly.