I cannot help but think this is wrong. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God—surely it is the work of the church to bring the Word to the people? Surely it is the work of the church not to bring pictures and stained glass and candles and robes to the people but first, before everything, to bring the Word?

Lady Mary often comes from her own set of rooms to listen to the daily sermon in mine. Sometimes, I know, she fears that the priests stray too far from the teachings of the church; but her love of languages and her devotion to the Bible mean that she always comes back, and sometimes she will offer her own translation of a phrase, or challenge the preacher’s version. I admire her scholarship. She has had the best of teachers and her understanding of Latin and her subtlety of translation are quite beautiful. If she had not been frightened into silence, I think she might have been a poet. She laughs when I tell her this one day and says that we are so alike, we should be sisters rather than a stepmother and daughter—we are both women who love fine clothes and beautiful language.

“Almost as if they are the same thing!” she confesses. “I get so much pleasure from embroidery and from poetry. I think there should be beauty in the words of the church and in the church paintings, so the little prie-dieu in my room should be beautiful too, with a golden crucifix and a crystal monstrance. But then I think I am sliding towards vanity. Really, I cannot deny it. I have my books bound with fine leather and jewels, and I collect illuminated manuscripts and prayer books. Why not, if it is for the glory of God and the delight of our eyes?”

I laugh. “I know! I know! And I’m afraid that my love of study is the sin of pride. I find it quite thrilling to understand things, as if reading were a journey of discovery. I long to know more and more, and now I want to make translations and even compose prayers.”

“Why should you not?” she demands. “If you take pride in reading the Word of God, that is surely a little sin? It’s more a virtue of study than a pride of scholarship.”

“It’s a joy I never thought I would have.”

“If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer,” she says. “For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer. You are not an anchorite, a solitary saint, you are a preacher.”

“Even though I am a woman and a wife?”