‘Even if the trumpeters come free, they will have to be fed,’ she says irritably, as if trumpeters are an exotic and expensive pet that I, in my vanity, have insisted on, instead of a loan from my sister Sybilla who wrote to me frankly that it does her no good in Saxony if I set off to one of the greatest kings in Europe in little more than a wagon with a couple of guards.

My brother says very little. This is a great triumph for him and a great step up in the world for his duchy. He is in a league with the other Protestant princes and dukes of Germany and they hope that this marriage will prompt England to join their alliance. If all the Protestant powers in Europe were united then they could attack France or the Hapsburg lands and spread the word of reform. They might get as far as Rome itself, they might curb the power of the Pope in his own city. Who knows what glory to God might come, if only I can be a good wife to a husband who has never been pleased before?

‘You must do your duty to God as you serve your husband,’ my brother says to me pompously.

I wait to see what exactly he means by this. ‘He takes his religion from his wives,’ he says. ‘When he was married to a princess from Spain he was named Defender of the Faith by the Pope himself. When he married the Lady Anne Boleyn she led him away from superstition to the light of reform. With Queen Jane he became Catholic again and if she had not died he would have reconciled with the Pope, for sure. Now, although he is no friend of the Pope, his country is all but Catholic. He could become a Roman Catholic again in a moment. But if you guide him as you should do, he will declare himself as a Protestant king and leader, and he will join with us.’

‘I will try my best,’ I say uncertainly. ‘But I am only twenty-four. He is a man of forty-eight and he has been king since he was a young man. He may not listen to me.’

‘I know you will do your duty,’ my brother tries to reassure himself; but as the time comes for me to leave, he grows more and more doubtful.

‘You cannot fear for her safety?’ I hear my mother mutter to him as he sits in the evening over his wine and stares at the fire as if he would foresee the future without me.

‘If she behaves herself she should be safe. But God knows he is a king who has learned that he can do anything he wants in his own lands.’

‘You mean to his wives?’ she asks in a whisper.

He shrugs uneasily.

‘She would never give him cause to doubt her.’

‘She has to be warned. He will hold the power of life and death over her. He will be able to do what he likes to her. He will control her utterly.’