“Go on,” I say to the musician who lets the notes die away as we listen to the sound of feet walking through the hall and coming up the stairs. “Go on.”

He strikes a chord as the door opens and Cromwell’s men Layton and Legh come into the room and bow to me. With them, like a ghost risen from the grave, but a triumphant ghost in new clothes, is my daughter-in-law, the grieving widow of my son Arthur, Jane, last seen clawing at the door of the family crypt and crying for her husband and son.

“Jane? What are you doing here? And what are you wearing?” I ask her.

She gives a little defiant laugh, and tosses her head. “These gentlemen are escorting me to London,” she says. “I am betrothed in marriage.”

I feel my breath coming faster as my temper rises. “You are a novice in a priory,” I say quietly. “Have you quite lost your mind?” I look at Richard Layton. “Are you abducting a nun?”

“She has spoken with the prior, and he has released her,” he says smoothly. “No novice can be held if she changes her mind. Lady Pole is betrothed to marry Sir William Barrantyne and I am commanded to take her to her new husband.”

“I thought William Barrantyne just stole goods and lands from the Church?” I say viciously. “I am behind the times. I didn’t know he captured nuns also.”

“I am no nun, and I should never have been put in there and kept there!” Jane shouts at me.

My ladies jump to their feet, my granddaughter Katherine scuttles towards me as if she would stand between me and Jane, but I gently put her to one side. “You asked, you begged, you cried to be allowed to withdraw from the world because your heart was broken,” I say steadily. “Now I see your heart is mended and you beg to come out again. But be very sure to tell your new husband that he takes a poor novice, not an heiress. You will get nothing from me when you marry and your father may leave your inheritance away from a runaway nun. You have no son to bear your name or inherit. You can return to the world if you wish; but it will not return everything to you. You will not find matters as you left them.”

She is horrified. She had not thought of this. I imagine her betrothed will be horrified too, if he even goes ahead with marriage to a woman who is not an heiress. “You have robbed me of my estate?”

“Not at all, you chose a life of poverty. You took one decision in grief and now are taking another in temper. You cannot seem to take a decision and stay with it.”

“I will get my fortune back!” she rages.

Coolly, I look past her to Richard Layton, who has been observing this with growing uneasiness. “Do you still want her?” I ask indifferently. “I imagine that your lord Thomas Cromwell did not plan to reward his friend William Barrantyne with a penniless madwoman?”

He is at a loss. I press my advantage. “And the prior will not have released her,” I say. “Prior Richard would not do so.”

“Prior Richard has resigned,” Thomas Legh says smoothly, speaking over his stammering partner. “Prior William Barlow will take his place and surrender the priory to Lord Cromwell.”

I don’t know Barlow, except by reputation as a great supporter of reform, which means, as we now all see, stealing from the Church and expelling good men. His brother serves as a Boleyn spy, and he hears George Boleyn’s confession, which must be a pretty tale.

“Prior Richard will not go!” I say hastily. “Certainly not for a Boleyn chaplain!”

“He has gone. And you will not see him again.”

For a moment I think that they mean that they have taken him to the Tower. “Arrested?” I ask with sudden fear.

“Wisely, he chose that it should not come to that.” Richard recovers himself. “Now I will take your daughter-in-law to London.”

“Here,” I say with sudden spite. I reach into my purse and I take a silver sixpence. I toss it straight at him, and Richard catches it without thinking, so that he looks a fool for taking such a little coin from me like a beggar. “For her expenses on the road. Because she has nothing.”

I write to Reginald and I send it to John Helyar in Flanders for him to take to my son.

They have given our priory to a stranger who will dismiss the priests and close the doors. They have taken Jane away to marry a friend of Cromwell’s. The Church cannot survive this treatment. I cannot survive it. Tell the Holy Father that we cannot bear it.

I am still reeling from this attack at the very heart of my home, at the church I love, when I get a note from London:

Lady Mother, please come at once. M.

L’ERBER, LONDON, APRIL 1536

He helps me from my horse and holds my arm as we go up the shallow steps to the doorway. He feels the stiffness in my stride. “I am sorry to have made you ride,” he says.

“I’d rather ride to London than hear about it too late in the country,” I say dryly. “Take me to my privy chamber and close the door on the others and tell me what’s going on.”

He does as I ask, and in moments I am seated in my chair by the fireside with a glass of mulled wine in my hand and Montague is standing before the fire, leaning against the stone chimney breast, looking into the flames.

“I need your advice,” he says. “I’ve been invited to dine with Thomas Cromwell.”

“Take a long spoon,” I reply, and earn a wry smile from my son.

“This might be the sign of everything changing.”

I nod.

“I know what it’s about,” he says. “Henry Courtenay is invited with me; he spoke with Thomas Seymour, who had been playing cards with Thomas Cromwell, Nicholas Carew, and Francis Bryan.”

“Carew and Bryan were Boleyn supporters.”

“Yes. But now, as a cousin to the Seymours, Bryan is advising Jane.”

I nod. “So Thomas Cromwell is now befriending those of us who support the princess or are kin to Jane Seymour?”

“Tom Seymour promises me that if Jane were to be queen she would recognize the princess, bring her to court, and see her restored as heir.”

I raise my eyebrows. “How could Jane be queen? How could Cromwell do this?”

Montague lowers his voice though we are behind a closed door in our own house. “Geoffrey spoke to John Stokesley, the Bishop of London, only yesterday. Cromwell had asked him if the king could legally abandon the Boleyn woman.”

“Legally abandon her?” I repeat. “What does that even mean? And what did the bishop reply?”

Montague gives a short laugh. “He’s no fool. He’d like to see the Boleyns thrown down, but he said he would only give his opinion to the king, and then only if he knew what it was he wanted to hear.”

“And do any of us know what he wants to hear?”

Montague shakes his head. “The signs are contradictory. On one hand he’s called Parliament, and a meeting of his council. And Cromwell is clearly plotting against the Boleyns. But the king got the Spanish ambassador to bow to her as queen, for the first time ever—so, no, we don’t know.”

“Then we must wait until we do.”

Thoughtfully I strip off my riding gloves and put them over the arm of my chair. I hold my hands to the warmth of the fire. “So what does Cromwell want from us? For he owes me a priory at the moment, and I am not feeling kindly towards him.”