The story so far…
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life.
Having escaped Wolsey’s fish cellar, gone abroad and come back, Frith finds himself in the Tower, charged with heresy. “They will burn you,” says Cromwell, if you cannot “soften your answers.”
Frith will not save himself, but Cromwell needs to save someone. He talks to Gardiner, he talks to More. He sends his own men to take him from the Tower to be examined at Croydon. They give him every opportunity to escape. “But Frith knows his road; he is going towards his death.”
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
Cromwell: “He should have run into the woods. That was his path.”
Cranmer: “Forgive me, but we do not all see as many paths as you.”
Later he will hear that Frith and the boy suffered, the wind blowing the flames away from them repeatedly. Death is a japester; call him and he will not come. He is a joker and he lurks in the dark, a black cloth over his face.