‘Get away,’ she says. ‘Get away before he comes for you.’

* * *

After she has gone I feel as if my last friend has left court. I go back to my rooms and my ladies set up a table of cards. I let them start to play and then I summon my ambassador and take him into the window bay where we cannot be overheard, to ask him if anyone has questioned him about me. He says they have not, he is ignored by everyone, isolated as if he were carrying the plague. I ask him if he could hire or buy two fast horses and keep them outside the castle walls in case of my sudden need. He says he has no money to hire or buy horses, and in any case the king has guards on my doors night and day. The men who I thought were there to keep me safe, to open the doors to my presence chamber, to announce my guests, are now my gaolers.

I am very afraid. I try to pray but even the words of the prayers are a trap. I cannot appear as if I am becoming a Papist, a Papist like Lord Lisle is now said to be; and yet I must not appear to have held to my brother’s religion; the Lutherans are suspected of being part of Cromwell’s plot to ruin the king.

When I see the king I try to behave pleasantly and calmly before him. I dare not challenge him, nor even protest my innocence. Most frightening of all is his manner to me, which is now warm and friendly, as if we were acquaintances about to part after a short journey together. He behaves as if our time together has been an enjoyable interlude that is now naturally drawing to a close.

He will not say goodbye to me, I know that. Princess Mary has warned me of that. There is no point waiting for the moment when he tells me that I am to face an accusation. I know that one of these evenings when I rise from the dinner table and curtsey to him and he kisses my hand so courteously will be the last time I ever see him. I may walk from the hall with my ladies following me to find my rooms filled with soldiers and my clothes already packed, my jewels returned to the treasury. It is a short journey from the palace of Westminster to the Tower, they will take me by river in the darkness and I will go in by the watergate, and I will leave by the block on Tower Green.

The ambassador has written to my brother to say that I am desperately frightened; but I do not hope for a reply. William will not mind me being sick with fear, and by the time they learn of the charges against me it will be too late to save me. And perhaps William would not even choose to save me. He has allowed this peril to come about, he must have hated me more than I ever knew.