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“The steward will make his rounds soon, and then we’ll be let out with a threat and probably a public scolding in chapel.”
    “Humph! I’d not pin my hopes on the steward. Thomas More is a heretic hunter. He’ll be the last to let us out.” Bayley’s voice.
    “How do you know that?” Frith asked.
    “Garrett told me. When he was staying over Christmas in quarters with the choirmaster. He said he knew Bishop Tunstall and More were after him.”
    “Sort of ‘buy my books and by the way they may get you killed.’ Fine time to tell us,” Frith said a little snippily.
    “Would it have stopped you?” Bayley asked.
    “You have a point,” Frith said, brushing the gray salt from his cloak as he removed it and handed it to Sumner. “Put this around Clerke. A man shouldn’t be sick
and
cold. We can’t lose heart. The cardinal and the dean and even More will not want it known that the college is ‘infected’ with heresy. Why do you think they shut us up here instead of a public gaol?”
    “May be that the gaols are full,” Sumner said weakly. “Or may be they just intend to let us rot here, like this stinking fish.” He pointed to the barrels in the corner.
    “Ah no, Sumner. We’ll not rot here. Don’t worry. There’s enough salt to preserve us,” Frith said, trying to lighten the mood. “They’ll let us out when they think our Lutheran fever is sufficiently chilled. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll bet you my Herodotus
and
my Virgil that we’ll all live to see old Thomas More and Wolsey laid out in their Roman funerary clothes. Now”—as if their incarceration were a mere inconvenience to be borne with equanimity—“this time you are Ulysses and I am Telemachus.” And he started his recitation again.
    “Firth, you’re either a fool or you’re a saint. I don’t know which.”
    I don’t know either,
he thought. But whichever, he was already quite ripe and more than a little chilled. And it had only been three weeks.
Be still my heart, thou hast known worse than this.
But John Frith found scant comfort in Homer’s words, for in truth when had he known worse?

    The afternoon shadows were lengthening when Kate made what she thought was her last call of the day at the palace of the Bishop of London. The cleric who answered the door frowned in recognition.
    “Bishop Tunstall is in conference today.”
    “But he was ‘in conference’ yesterday.”
    “As he will be tomorrow. Look, mistress, I do not mean to be unkind. I assure you I have given him your message, and he says he knows nothing of the matter. He says you should petition the sheriff or the Lord Mayor of London.”
    “I have already done so. Several times. I’ve bribed the wardens of Newgate and even the Old Compter. They know of no John Gough.”
    “The Fleet?”
    “The Fleet too.”
    Kate tried to soften her tone. She knew the cleric would not respond to harshness. He was young and had a kind face. “Please. A man doesn’t just disappear. My brother was a good citizen . . . is a good citizen.” She would not speak of him in the past tense. “He is a bookseller and printer of some reputation.”
    A light seemed to go on in the clerk’s face, “Ah, a printer.” His expression hardened. “Check the Lollard Tower,” he said, and before she could tell him she’d already been to Lambeth Palace with its infamous and dreaded square tower built to house and torture heretics, he shut the door in her face. She’d gone to the Lollard Tower the first week, her heart in her throat, almost faint with relief when the warden had said the prison was full and they had taken no new prisoners for weeks. That being the case, she thought, they might just frighten John and let him go. But that relief had vanished as the days crawled by and he did not appear.
    She reached up to knock again at the door and then let her hand drop. What was the use? It was getting late. Mary would want to be by her own hearth when darkness fell. Kate should head home,