AMPTHILL CASTLE, BEDFORDSHIRE,

AUTUMN 1543

The argument on the barge between the bishops, Stephen Gardiner, who wants the restoration of the old church to the old ways, and Thomas Cranmer, who believes that the church should reform, comes to a head when we are staying at Ampthill Castle, Katherine of Aragon’s old home. We are kept indoors by a week of cold and foggy weather: the leaves on the trees drip water all day long, the ground is sodden, and the lanes are deep with mud. The king takes a slight fever that makes his eyes and nose run, he aches in every bone and cannot go out. Trapped indoors with the courtiers using every moment to persuade him, he agrees that the reformers have gone too far, become heretical, and authorizes a wave of arrests that reach from London into the court itself. The heresies, one by one, are traced back to Thomas Cranmer, and once again the Privy Council scents triumph and calls him in to face an inquiry.

“They thought they had him this time,” Nan whispers to me as we are kneeling on the chancel steps of the little chapel, the king seated at the back with a writing desk, surrounded by advisors, signing papers, as the priest mumbles the words of the Mass hidden behind the rood screen. “He went in like Thomas More, expecting martyrdom.”

“Not him!” Catherine Brandon hisses from the other side. “He knew he was safe. It was all a play, a game.”

“The king himself said it was a masque,” Anne Seymour leans forward on the other side of Nan to tell me. “He said it was a masque called The Taming of the Archbishop.”

“What did he mean?”

“The king let Stephen Gardiner arrest Thomas Cranmer. But he had already warned Cranmer that his enemies had evidence against him, months ago. He called him the greatest heretic in Kent and laughed as he said it. The Privy Council sent for Cranmer, thinking he would shake with fear. They called him in to accuse him and take him to the Tower. They had the guards ready, the barge was waiting for him. Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk were triumphant. They thought they would silence the archbishop and halt reform forever.”

“Gardiner didn’t even bring him in at once. He made him wait. He took his time over it,” Catherine interpolates.

“He was savoring his moment,” Anne agrees. “But just as they were about to grab him and tear his hat from his head, Thomas Cranmer pulls out a ring, the king’s own ring, and says that he has His Majesty’s friendship and trust, and that there is to be a new inquiry into heresy: he is now going to inquire into them—and that charges will follow.”