‘Oh, hoity-toity,’ old Seymour says. ‘If you can afford it.’

‘Afford what’s chaste, what’s seemly?’ Edward snaps. ‘You never could. Be quiet, you old lecher. The king pretends to forget your crimes, but no one really forgets. You are pointed at: the old goat who stole his son’s bride.’

‘Yes, hold your peace, Father,’ Tom says. ‘We’re talking to Cromwell.’

‘One thing I am afraid of,’ he says. ‘Your sister loves her old mistress, Katherine. This is well known to the present queen, who spares no opportunity for harshness. If she sees that the king is looking at Jane, I am afraid she will be further persecuted. Anne is not one to sit by while her husband makes a – a companion – of another woman. Even if she thought it a temporary arrangement.’

‘Jane will pay no heed,’ Edward says. ‘What though she gets a pinch or a slap? She will know how to bear herself patiently.’

‘She will play him for some great reward,’ says old Seymour.

Tom Seymour says, ‘He made Anne a marquise before he had her.’

Edward’s face is as grim as if he is ordering up an execution. ‘You know what he made her. Marquise first. Queen thereafter.’

Parliament is prorogued, but London lawyers, flapping their black gowns like crows, settle to their winter term. The happy news seeps and leaks through the court. Anne lets out her bodices. Bets are laid. Pens scribble. Letters are folded. Seals pressed to wax. Horses are mounted. Ships set sail. The old families of England kneel and ask God why he favours the Tudors. King Francis frowns. Emperor Charles sucks his lip. King Henry dances.

The conversation at Elvetham, that early hour’s confabulation: it is as if it had never been. The king’s doubts about his marriage, it seems, have vanished.

Though in the desolate winter gardens, he has been seen walking with Jane.

Her family surround her; they call him in. ‘What did he say, sister?’ Edward Seymour demands. ‘Tell me everything, everything he said.’

Jane says, ‘He asked me if I would be his good mistress.’

They exchange glances. There is a difference between a mistress and a good mistress: does Jane know that? The first implies concubinage. The second, something less immediate: an exchange of tokens, a chaste and languorous admiration, a prolonged courtship…though it can’t be very prolonged, of course, or Anne will have given birth and Jane will have missed her chance. The women cannot predict when the heir will see the light, and he can get no further with Anne’s doctors.

‘Look, Jane,’ Edward tells her, ‘this is no time to be shy. You must give us particulars.’

‘He asked me if I would look kindly on him.’

‘Kindly on him when?’

‘For instance, if he wrote me a poem. Praising my beauty. So I said I would. I would thank him for it. I wouldn’t laugh, even behind my hand. And I wouldn’t raise any objection to any statements he might make in verse. Even if they were exaggerated. Because in poems it is usual to exaggerate.’