“We will do it?” I ask, as if I don’t know that the answer is yes.

“We have to,” Montague says grimly. Then he looks up at me, and I see my own fear in his face. “But I am afraid,” he admits honestly.

Both Montague and I write to Reginald. Geoffrey writes too and we send the letters by Thomas Cromwell’s messengers, so that he can see how loudly we condemn Reginald for his folly, for the abuse of his position as the king’s own scholar, and how clearly we call on him to withdraw everything he has said.

Take another way and serve our master as thy bounden duty is to do, unless thou wilt be the confusion of thy mother.

I leave the letter unsealed, but I kiss my signature and hope that he will know. He will not withdraw one word of what he has written, and I know that he has written nothing but the truth. He will know that I wouldn’t have him deny the truth. But he can never come to England while the king lives, and I cannot see him. Perhaps, given my great age, I will never see him again. The only way that my family can be together again will be if Reginald comes with an army from Spain to rouse the commons, restore the Church, and put the princess on the throne. “Come the day!” I whisper, and then I take my letter to Thomas Cromwell for his spies to study for a hidden code of treason.

The great man, Lord Secretary and Vicegerent of the Church, invites me into his privy chamber where three men are bowed over letters and accounts books. The work of the world revolves around Thomas Cromwell, just as it did around his old master, Thomas Wolsey. He takes care of everything.

“The king requests that your son come to court and explain his letter,” he says to me. Out of the corner of my eye I see one of the clerks pause with his pen raised, waiting to copy down my reply.

“I pray that he will come,” I say. “I will tell him, as his mother, that he should come. He should show every obedience to His Gracious Majesty, as we all do, as he was raised to do.”

“His Majesty is not angry now with his cousin Reginald,” Cromwell says gently. “He wants to understand the arguments, he wants Reginald to talk with other scholars so that they can agree.”

“What a very good idea.” I look directly into his smiling face. “I shall tell Reginald to come at once. I will add a note to my letter.”

Cromwell, the great liar, the great heretic, the great pander to his master, bows his head as if he is impressed with my loyalty. I, as bad as he is, bow back.

L’ERBER, LONDON, OCTOBER 1536

At the back, untouched and unread, is the Bible that the king has ordered shall be placed in every church. Everyone of my household believes that God speaks in Latin to his Church. English is the language of everyday mortals, of the market, of the midden. How can anything that is of God be written down in the language of sheep farming and money? God is the Word, he is the Pope, the priest, the bread and the wine, the mysterious Latin of the litany, the unreadable Bible. But we do not defy the king on this, we don’t defy him on anything.

“Queen Jane went down on her knees to the king and begged him to restore the abbeys and not steal them from the people.” Montague bows his head as if in prayer and mutters the news to me over his rosary. “Lincolnshire is up to defend the abbeys, there’s not a village that is not marching.”

“Is it our time?”

Montague bows his head farther so that no one can see him smile. “Soon,” he says. “The king is sending Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, to put down the commons. He thinks it will be readily done.”

“Do you?”

“I pray.” Cautiously, Montague does not even say what he prays for. “And the princess sent you her love. The king has brought her and little Lady Elizabeth to court. For a man who says that the commons will be easily put down, it’s telling that he should have his daughters brought to him for safety.”

Montague leaves as soon as the service is over, but I don’t need him to bring me news. Soon all of London is buzzing. The cook’s boy, sent to market to get some nutmeg, comes home with the claim that forty thousand men, armed and horsed, are marching in Boston.

My London steward comes to me to tell me that two lads from Lincolnshire have run away, gone home to join with the commons. “What did they think they were going to do?” I ask.

“They take an oath,” he says, his voice carefully bland. “Apparently, they swear that the church shall have its fees and funds, that the monasteries shall not be thrown down, but shall be restored, and that the false bishops and false advisors who recommended these wrongs shall be exiled from the king and from the kingdom.”

“Bold demands,” I say, keeping my face quite still.

“Bold demands in the face of danger,” he adds. “The king has sent his friend Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, to join with the Duke of Norfolk against the rebels.”

“Two dukes against a handful of fools?” I say. “God save the commons from folly and hurt.”

“The commons may save themselves. They’re not unarmed,” he says. “And there are more than a few of them. The gentry are with them and they have horse and weapons. Perhaps it is the dukes who had better look to their own safety. They say that Yorkshire is ready to rise, and Tom Darcy has sent to the king to ask what his answer must be.”

“Lord Thomas Darcy?” I think of the man who has my pansy badge in his pocket.

“The rebels have a banner,” my steward continues. “They are marching under the five wounds of Christ. They say it is like a holy war. The Church against the infidel, the commons against the king.”

“And where is Lord Hussey?” I ask, naming one of the lords of the country, the princess’s former chamberlain.

“He’s with the rebels,” my steward says, nodding at my blank-faced astonishment. “And his wife is out of the Tower and with him.”

The country is so disturbed with rumors of uprisings, even in the South, that I stay in London in early October. I take my barge downriver one cold day as the mist is lying on the water and the evening sun burning red, and the tide is up and the current strong.