9. When Meg finds God again, it’s because of a passage from Isaiah that she finds written in Henry and Anne’s shared book of hours: “He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Meg feels she hears God speaking directly to her, telling her that He also has suffered and thus knows her suffering. What does this Bible passage mean to you? Do you have a favorite piece of Scripture as well?

My favorite piece of Scripture at any given time is whichever one God is using to speak to me at the moment, because when He does, I know He is attentive to my concerns and hears and loves me in both hopeful and ashen circumstances. He has already prepared a plan and a way.

I think this is why that passage was so effective for Meg. She felt like she had undergone a lot—beatings by her father, loss of the love of her life, putting aside her own hopes and dreams for a life of meaning and serving her friend, who seemed to have it all. When she sees Christ suffering, she understands that He relates in every way to her sorrow on a human level and she opens up to Him. She also sees Him as God, knowing that He has already prepared a plan and a way, and she begins to trust. When she does, her life of excitement truly begins.

10. The first epistle of Saint Peter the Apostle, as Meg reads it aloud to Anne in her Tower prison, instructs men to submit to their kings and other rulers as they are sent by God Himself. Throughout this story, however, we’re shown the evils a ruler can visit upon his people when he believes he is, and is treated by all as, God’s anointed sovereign. Do you think this belief gives the power hungry a terrible license? At what point do you think a person must violate this instruction? Or do you agree with the rest of the epistle that encourages the faithful to endure wrongful suffering?

I don’t think the power-hungry need a license from others; they ascribe it to themselves and eventually are beyond all correction from the voice of reason. What we as individuals must do at any given time is discern what our role is in “such a time as this.” Are we to stand up to evil, publicly, as Bonhoeffer did? Or are we to keep a low cover and do good under the surface, as the Ten Booms did? Both responded to Nazi power in appropriate ways for the paths their lives were to take and the good they were to do while on them. One thing we do know for certain: it’s never God’s will to call evil good or good evil, so we are not to, either.

11. As you say in your Author’s Note, Anne Boleyn has been portrayed and perceived as a harlot, witch, schemer, brilliant strategist, friend to the Reformation, and singularly intelligent and strong woman. After writing this book, what is your opinion of her? Why do you think she still evokes such controversy?

I think Anne was a complex woman who has, for too long, been denied the shading of any mortal life. She was certainly groomed and encouraged to push herself and her family as far along the road to success as she could take them and did so willingly, even sought out those opportunities. And yet that is no different from the expectation any family of that time would have had for their daughters and sons. She was witty but could be sharp, too. She had charm and allure and wasn’t afraid to use them on her own behalf, but she was also a loyal friend who used her power, almost without fail, to help others and especially the nascent reformed church in England.

It’s easy to pick up a touchy fact that makes all of us married women a bit angry—she was the other woman in a divorce case—without realizing the complexity of the times. Many believed Henry’s marriage to his brother’s wife had been wrong; it had indeed required the pope to dispense of that fact. They believed that England could come to ruin, or be gobbled by the Spanish, without a male heir. They understood that other queens had quietly retired to abbeys when they’d been unable to “do their duty.” Normally, royal marriages were not love matches. They existed to purpose and that purpose must be fulfilled.

Anne evokes emotion because she was, and always will remain, larger than life. And because she died in such a great and terrible way at the hand of the man pledged to love and protect her.

12. Besides the fascinating machinations of Henry VIII and his noble contemporaries, Henry’s reign was an important period in the history and evolution of Christianity. In your opinion, what are some of the most profound, lasting changes that resulted from the Henry/Anne/ Katherine triangle?

It was the time when men truly began to reason from Scripture itself for themselves—as Henry and those he employed did to ascertain the validity of his marriage. By the end of Henry’s reign there were Bibles in English in every church in England. God was now on His way to being at home in both the cathedral and the croft.