His next question breaks into the memories that I wish I could forget. ‘Do you think he might have been . . .’ He pauses. ‘Ill-wished?’

Ill-wished? I can hardly believe what I am hearing. Is the duke seriously suggesting that the king is impotent with his wife as a result of a curse, or a spell, or an ill-wishing? Of course the law of the land says that impotence in a healthy man can only be caused by the action of a witch; but in real life everyone knows that illness or old age can render a man feeble and the king is grossly fat, almost paralysed with pain and sick as a dog in both body and soul. Ill-wishing? The last time the king claimed to be a victim of ill-wishing, the woman he accused was my sister-in-law Anne, who went to the block, guilty of witchcraft, the evidence being the king’s impotence with her and her lust with other men.

‘You cannot think that the queen . . .’ I break off. ‘No-one could think that this queen . . . that yet another queen . . .’ The suggestion is so preposterous and so fraught with danger I cannot even put it into words. ‘The country would not stand . . . nobody would believe it . . . not again . . .’ I break off. ‘He can’t go on doing this . . .’

‘I am thinking nothing. But if he is unmanned then someone must be ill-wishing him. Who could it be, if not her?’

I am silent. If the duke is collecting evidence of the queen ill-wishing her husband, then she is a dead woman.

‘He has no desire for the queen at the moment,’ I begin. ‘But surely it is nothing worse than that? Desire may come. After all, he is not a young man, he is not a well man.’

He nods. I am trying to judge what he wants to hear. ‘And he has desire for others,’ I go on.

‘Ah, this proves the accusation,’ he says slickly. ‘It could be that he has been ill-wished only when he lies with the queen, so that he cannot be a man with her, so he cannot give England a son and heir.’

‘If you say so,’ I agree. Pointless to say that it is far more likely that since he is old and often ill, he has not the lust that he used to have; and only a little slut like Katherine Howard with her tricks and her charm can arouse him.

‘So who would ill-wish him?’ he persists.

I shrug. Whoever I name should say their farewells, for if charged with witchcraft against the king, then they are dead. There can be no proof of innocence and no plea of not guilty; under the new laws any treasonous intent, any thought is a crime as grave as the deed itself. King Henry has passed a law against his people thinking, and his people dare not think that he is wrong. ‘I don’t know who would do such wickedness,’ I say firmly. ‘I cannot imagine.’