Thank God, thank God, I have to sign nothing that blames her for the king’s impotence. I don’t have to give evidence that she cast a spell on him or bewitched him, or lay with half a dozen men, or gave birth in secret to a monster. This time, I have to say nothing like that. We all sign the same statement, which says only that she told us that she lay down with him every night as a maid and rose every morning as a maid, and that from what she said to us it was clear that she is such a fool that she never knew that there was anything wrong. We are supposed to have advised her that to be a wife required more than a kiss goodnight, and a blessing in the morning, we are supposed to have said that she wouldn’t get a son this way; and she is supposed to have said that she was content to know no more. All this chatter is supposed to have taken place in her room between the four of us, conducted in fluent English without a moment’s hesitation and no interpreter.

I seek out the duke before the barge takes us back to Richmond.

‘They do realise that she doesn’t talk like this?’ I say. ‘The conversation that we have all sworn took place could never have happened? Anyone who has been in the queen’s rooms would know this at once for a lie. In real life we muddle along with the few words that she knows, and we repeat things half a dozen times before we all understand each other. And anyone who knows her would know that she would never ever speak of this with all of us together. She is far too modest.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says grandly. ‘They needed a statement to say that she is a virgin, as she ever was. Nothing more.’

For the first time in weeks, I think that they might spare her. ‘Is he just putting her aside?’ I ask. I hardly dare to hope. ‘Is he not accusing her of unmanning him?’

‘He will be rid of her,’ he says. ‘Your statement today will serve to show her as a most deceptive and cunning witch.’

I gasp. ‘How have I incriminated her as a witch?’

‘You have written that she knows he is unmanned, and even in her chamber with her own women she has pretended that she knows nothing about what passes between a man and wife. As you say yourself, who could believe her claim? Who ever speaks like that? What woman put into a king’s bed would know so little? What woman in the world is that ignorant? Clearly she must be lying, so clearly she is hiding a conspiracy. Clearly she is a witch.’

‘But . . . but . . . I thought this statement was supposed to show her as innocent?’ I stammer. ‘A virgin with no knowledge?’

‘Exactly,’ he says. The duke allows himself a dark gleam of a smile. ‘That is the beauty of it. You, all three of you highly regarded ladies of her chamber, have sworn to a statement that shows her either as innocent as the Virgin Mary, or as deeply cunning as the witch Hecate. It can be used either way, exactly as the king requires. You have done a good day’s work, Jane Boleyn. I am pleased with you.’