‘And I have never had it,’ I say quietly to myself in my own language. ‘If he could abandon his wife of sixteen years, a woman he had loved, how readily, how easily can he dispose of me, a woman he has never even liked?’

She looks at me. ‘What will become of you?’

I know my face is bleak. ‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘I don’t know. If the king allies with France and takes Kitty Howard as his lover then I suppose he will send me home.’

‘If not worse,’ she says very softly.

I give a rueful smile. ‘I don’t know what could be worse than my home.’

‘The Tower,’ she says simply. ‘The Tower would be worse. And then the scaffold.’

The silence that follows those words seems to last a long time. Without speaking I rise up from my chair and go to the door that leads out to my public rooms and the princess steps back to let me precede her. We go through the withdrawing room in silence, both of us haunted by our own thoughts, and enter through the small door of my rooms to a great bustle and fuss. Servants are running from gallery to chamber carrying goods. A dining table is being set up in my presence chamber and it is laid with the gold and silver plate of the royal treasury.

‘What is happening now?’ I ask, bewildered.

‘His Majesty the King has announced that he will dine in your rooms,’ Lady Rochford bustles forwards and curtseys to tell me.

‘Good.’ I try to sound as if I am very pleased but I am still filled with dread at the thought of the king’s spite and the Tower and the scaffold. ‘I am honoured to invite His Grace by my rooms.’

‘To my rooms,’ Princess Mary corrects me quietly.

‘To my rooms,’ I repeat.

‘Shall you change your gown for dinner?’

‘Yes.’ I see that my ladies in waiting have already put on their best, Kitty Howard’s cap is so far back on her head she might as well dispense with it altogether, and she is loaded with chains of gold strung with little seed pearls. She has diamonds dancing in her ears, she has pearls wound round and round her neck. She must have come into some money from somewhere. I have never seen her wear more than a little chain of thin gold before. She sees me looking at her and she sweeps me a curtsey and then spins on the spot so I can admire the effect of a new gown of rose silk with an underskirt of deep pink.

‘Pretty,’ I say. ‘New?’

‘Yes,’ she says, and then her eyes slide away like a child caught out in thieving and I know at once that all this finery has come from the king.

‘Shall I come and help you dress?’ she asks, almost apologetically.

I nod and she and two of the other maids in waiting follow me into my inner privy chamber. My gown for dinner is already laid out and Katherine runs to the chest and takes out my linen.