‘She would have been. Coming after all these months of Gardiner and his minions trying to turn me against her.’ His voice rose angrily, but I was – for the moment – no longer the object of his fury. ‘Gardiner told me she was a heretic that denied the Mass; they would have broken my heart again!’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘But I knew their ways, I knew my Kate was faithful and true, the only one since Jane. So I told them I would do nothing without strict proof. And they brought none, none!’ His face was red now, sweating. ‘Those rogues, that would have had me turn against Kate, and take me back to Rome! I have seen through them, they will pay—’

The diatribe ended in a bout of painful coughing which turned the King’s face puce. The Lamentation, which he had been holding on his lap, began to slide to the floor. I leaned forward instinctively, but Paget, with a quick frown at me, returned it to the King before taking his goblet, hastily refilling it, and handing it back to him. Henry drank deeply, then sat back in his chair, gasping. Paget murmured, ‘Your majesty, perhaps too much should not be said in front of this man—’

‘No,’ the King said. ‘This he should know.’ He looked at me. ‘When the manuscript was brought to me, I feared what it might hold. But I have studied it.’ Then, quite unexpectedly, he gave a prim little smile. ‘Its sentiments are a little thoughtless, but – ’ he waved a hand dismissively – ‘the Queen is but a woman, and emotional. Nothing is said here against the Mass. The book is not heretical.’ His tone now was pompous, judgemental, as befitted one authorized by God Himself to decide such matters, as Henry truly believed he was. ‘Kate fears too much,’ he concluded. I thought, how fast his emotions change, and how he wears them on his sleeve. At least when he chooses to. For the last few months had shown, too, how coldly secretive he could be. Yet his last words gave me hope for the Queen.

‘May now be the time to tell her you have it?’ Paget asked him, hesitantly.

‘No,’ the King answered sharply, the edge back in his voice. ‘In these days the more things I keep safe in my own hands the better.’ I realized he had kept the manuscript to himself because, until Bertano’s mission failed, there remained at least the possibility that he might still decide against the reformist faction. Then a Protestant Queen would be a liability, and the Lamentation could still be a weapon. He loved the Queen, yes, but ultimately, like everyone in the realm, she was only a pawn on his chessboard. He would have killed her if he thought he had to, little as he wished it. And it would, of course, all have been someone else’s fault.