He gave me some very good jewels, I sent for the goldsmith to value them at once and they are indeed very fine, though some of them I know for a fact were brought by Katherine of Aragon from Spain, and who wants jewels that belonged to a friend of your grandmother? I have no doubt that there will be sables as good as Queen Anne’s to follow, and already I have commanded the dressmakers to make me new gowns and there will be gifts from everyone in the world, as soon as everyone knows, as soon as everyone is told.

But there is no denying that it was not as great a wedding as I had expected, and it was not a patch on hers. I thought we would have planned it for months, and there would be processions and my important entry to London, and I should have spent my first night in the Tower and then processed to Westminster Abbey through streets which were swathed in cloth of gold, with people singing songs about me. ‘Fair Katherine’, I thought they would sing. ‘Rose of England.’

But no, instead there is a mere bishop, there is the king, there am I in a bewitching gown of grey-green silk which shifts colours as I move, and a new hood, and his pearls at least, and there is my uncle and grandmother as witnesses, and a couple of men from his court, and then we go to dine; and then . . . And then! . . . It is unbelievable! Nobody talks of anything but the beheading of Thomas Cromwell.

At a wedding breakfast! Is that what a bride wants to hear on her wedding day? There are no healths drunk and no speeches made to me, and scarcely any celebration. Nobody pays me any compliments at all, there is no dancing and no flirtation and no flattery. They can talk of nothing else but Thomas Cromwell because he has been beheaded today. On my wedding day! Is this how the king celebrates his wedding? With the death of his chief advisor and best friend? It’s not a very nice gift for a girl on her wedding day, is it? It’s not as if I am whoever she is in the Bible who wanted someone’s head for a wedding gift. All I really wanted for a wedding gift were sables, not the news that the king’s advisor has been beheaded, calling for mercy.

But it is all the old people talk about, no-one consults my feelings at all, they are utterly delighted with it, of course, and so they talk over the top of me, as if I were a child instead of the new Queen of England, and they talk about the alliance with France and say that King Francis will help us with the Pope. And nobody asks me for my opinion at all.

The king grips my hand beneath the shield of the table and leans towards me and whispers, ‘I cannot wait for tonight, my rose, my finest jewel,’ which is hardly very inspiring when I think that Thomas Culpepper had to help him to his seat, and will no doubt have to heave him into my bed.