And I, looking up at him, fluttering my eyelashes down as if I am overwhelmed by him, say: ‘Oh, Your Grace! I should quite forget my steps if I were to dance for you. I would have to be guided, every step of the way. You would have to lead me wherever you wanted.’

So he says: ‘Pretty little thing, I know where I would lead you, if I could.’

Oh, do you? I think. Well, you naughty old man. Can’t muster a salute for your own wife and yet whispering to me.

The king steps back and leads the Princess Mary back to the queen and the musicians strike a chord and the young men of the court step forwards for their partners. I feel a hand take mine and I turn around with my eyes cast down as if I am shy at being asked. ‘No need to trouble yourself with that,’ says my uncle Norfolk coldly. ‘I want a word with you.’

Rather shocked that it is not handsome young Thomas Culpepper, I let him escort me to the side of the chamber and there is Lady Rochford, as if waiting, of course she is waiting, and I am between the two of them and my heart sinks down into my little dancing shoes, I am sure, I am certain-sure that he is going to send me home for flirting with the king.

‘What d’you think?’ he asks Lady Rochford over my head.

‘Uncle, I am innocent,’ I say, but no-one pays any attention to me.

‘Possible,’ she says.

‘I’d say certain,’ he returns.

They both look at me as if I were a cygnet for the carving.

‘Katherine, you have taken the king’s eye,’ my uncle says.

‘I have done nothing,’ I squeak. ‘Uncle, I swear I am innocent.’ I give a little gasp when I hear myself. I am thinking of Anne Boleyn, who said those very words to him and found no mercy. ‘Please . . .’ I whisper. ‘Please, I beg you . . . Truly I have done nothing . . .’

‘Keep your voice down,’ says Lady Rochford, glancing around, but nobody is paying us any attention, nobody is going to call me away.

‘You have taken his fancy, now you have to take his heart,’ he goes on, as if I had said nothing. ‘You have done beautifully so far; but he is a man of a certain age and he doesn’t want a little slut on his knee, he likes to fall in love, he likes the pursuit better than the capture. He wants to think he is courting a girl of unblemished reputation.’

‘I am! Truly, I am! Unblemished!’

‘You have to lead him on and bring him on and yet forever draw back.’

I wait, I have no idea what he wants of me.

‘In short he is not just to lust for you, he has to fall in love with you.’

‘But why?’ I ask. ‘So that he gets me a good husband?’