Dr Harst thinks this means that they will come for me at once. The king has closed the whole country so that he can have me tried, found guilty, and beheaded, before my own family can even hear of my arrest. No-one in Europe can protest or cry shame! No-one in Europe will even know until it is over and I am dead. I believe this to be true. It must be within a few days, perhaps even tomorrow.

I cannot sleep. I spend the night at the window watching for the first light of dawn. I think this will be my last night on earth and I regret more than anything else that I have wasted my life. I spent all my time obeying my father and then my brother, I squandered these last months in trying to please the king, I did not treasure the little spark that is me, uniquely me. Instead I put my will and my thoughts beneath the will of the men who command me. If I had been the gyrfalcon that my father called me I would have flown high, and nested in lonely, cold places, and ridden the free wind. Instead I have been like a bird in a mews, always tied and sometimes hooded. Never free and sometimes blind.

As God is my witness, if I live through this night, through this week, I shall try to be true to myself in the future. If God spares me I shall try to honour him by being me, myself; not by being a sister or a daughter or a wife. This is an easy promise to make for I don’t think I will be held to it. I don’t think God will save me, I don’t think Henry will spare me. I don’t think I will have any life beyond next week.

As it grows light and then golden with the morning sun of summertime, I stay at my seat at the window, and they bring me a cup of small ale and a slice of bread and butter as I watch the river for the flutter of the standard and the steady dip and sweep of oars, for the coming of the royal barge to take me to the Tower. Any beat of a drum, drifting over the water to keep the rowers in time, and I can hear my heart echoing its thudding in my ears, thinking that it is them, come for me today. Funny then that when they finally come, not until mid-afternoon, it is not a troop but only a single man, Richard Beard, who arrives without warning in a little wherry, when I am walking in the garden, my hands cold in my pockets and my feet clumsy with fear. He finds me in the privy garden when I am walking among the roses, bending my head down to the blooms but unable to smell the perfume of the full-blown flowers. From a distance I must look to him like a happy woman, a young queen in a garden of roses. Only as he comes close does he see the whiteness of my blank face.