Later that day, 29 January, he will be on his way to Greenwich, shocked, apprehensive, at the news Fitzwilliam’s men had brought. People will tell him, ‘I was there, I was there when Anne broke off her talk, I was there when she put down her book, her sewing, her lute, I was there when she broke off her merriment at the thought of Katherine lowered into the ground. I saw her face change. I saw her ladies close about her. I saw them sweep her to her chamber and bolt the door, and I saw the trail of blood left on the ground as she walked.’

We need not believe that. Not the trail of blood. They saw it in their minds perhaps. He will ask, what time did the queen’s pains begin? But no one seemed able to tell him, despite their close knowledge of the incident. They have concentrated on the blood trail and left out the facts. It will take all day for the bad news to leak from the queen’s bedside. Sometimes women do bleed but the child clings on and grows. Not this time. Katherine is too fresh in her tomb to lie quiet. She has reached out and shaken Anne’s child free, so it is brought untimely into the world and no bigger than a rat.

At evening, outside the queen’s suite, the dwarf sits on the flags, rocking and moaning. She is pretending to be in labour, someone says: unnecessarily. ‘Can you not remove her?’ he asks the women.

Jane Rochford says, ‘It was a boy, Mr Secretary. She had carried it under four months, as we judge.’

Early October, then. We were still on progress. ‘You will have a note of the itinerary,’ Lady Rochford murmurs. ‘Where was she then?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I should think you would like to know. Oh, I know that plans were changed, sometimes on the instant. That sometimes she was with the king, sometimes not, that sometimes Norris was with her, and sometimes others of the gentlemen. But you are right, Master Secretary. It is of no moment. The doctors can be sure of very little. We cannot say when it was conceived. Who was here and who was there.’

‘Perhaps we should leave it like that,’ he says.

‘So. Now that she has lost another chance, poor lady…what world will be?’

The dwarf scrambles to her feet. Watching him, holding his gaze, she pulls her skirts up. He is not quick enough to look away. She has shaved herself or someone has shaved her, and her parts are bald, like the parts of an old woman or a little child.

Later, before the king, holding Mary Shelton’s hand, Jane Rochford is unsure of everything. ‘The child had the appearance of a male,’ she says, ‘and of about fifteen weeks’ gestation.’

‘What do you mean, the appearance of?’ the king demands. ‘Could you not tell? Oh, get away, woman, you have never given birth, what do you know? It should have been matrons at her bedside, what did you want there? Could not you Boleyns give way to someone more useful, must you be there in a crowd whenever disaster strikes?’