I looked at the Queen. Her eyes were cast down once more. This subdued figure was not the Catherine Parr I knew. I asked quietly, ‘Has it come to that?’

‘I fear it may,’ Cranmer answered.

The Queen pressed her hands together. ‘It is all my fault. My vanity, my forwardness—’

Lord Parr interrupted, his voice authoritative. ‘I think it best we start at the beginning and tell Serjeant Shardlake all that has happened since the spring.’

The Queen nodded. ‘Fetch chairs, all of you.’ She sighed. ‘It is no simple tale.’

We obeyed, sitting in a semi-circle before the throne. She turned to her uncle. ‘Tell it all, tell it straight. Begin with what the King said in March.’

Lord Parr looked at me hard. ‘You will be only the fifth person to know this story.’

I sat still, trying to keep my hands unclenched on my knees. I realized that I had truly launched myself into a deep well this time. The Queen was looking at me with a sort of desperation, toying with the pearl at her neck.

‘The King was very ill in the spring,’ Lord Parr began. ‘He did not leave his rooms for many weeks. He would call the Queen to him for company; her presence much comforted him. The talk turned often to matters of religion, as it does with the King. At that time, though, Bishop Gardiner had just returned from abroad, in high feather from his success in negotiating his new treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles.’

‘And then I made my great mistake,’ the Queen said, quietly and sadly. ‘I have ridden high for three years, always careful in everything I have said. But I was overcome by the sin of vanity, and forgot I am a mere woman.’ She looked down again, lifting the pearl on the end of its golden chain and staring at it. ‘I argued with the King too forcefully, trying to persuade him to lift the ban on those of low rank reading the Bible. I told him that all need access to Christ’s Word if they are to be saved . . .’

‘Sadly,’ Lord Parr said, ‘her majesty went too far, and annoyed the King – ’

The Queen calmed herself, letting the pearl drop. ‘My greatest foolishness was to talk in such manner to the King once in the presence of Bishop Gardiner. After I left, the King told Gardiner – ’ she hesitated – ‘“So women are become clerks, and I am to be lectured by my wife in my old days.”’ I saw tears prick the corners of her eyes.