ANNE, RICHMOND PALACE,

6 AUGUST 1540

He is to visit me for dinner. Why, I cannot think. The royal groom of the household came yesterday and told my steward that the king would have the pleasure of dining with me today. I asked those ladies who are still with me if anyone had any news from the court, and one of them said that she had heard that the king was at Oatlands Palace, all but alone, hunting to take his mind off the terrible betrayal of Thomas Cromwell.

One of them asked me if I thought the king was coming to beg my pardon and to ask me to come back to him.

‘Is it possible?’ I ask her.

‘If he was mistaken? If the inquiry was mistaken?’ she asks. ‘Why else would he come and see you, so soon after the end of the marriage? If he still wants to end the marriage, why would he dine with you?’

I go outside to the beautiful gardens and walk a little way, my head buzzing with thoughts. It does not seem possible that he should want to take me back, but there is no doubt that if he has changed his mind he can take me back, just as easily as he could put me aside.

I wonder if it would be possible for me to refuse to go back to him. I would want to return to the court and to be restored to my position, of course. But there is a freedom to being a single woman that I might learn to enjoy. I have never in my life before been Anne of Cleves, Anne by myself, not a sister, not a daughter, not a wife, but Anne: pleasing myself. I swore if I was spared death then I would live my life, my own life, not a life commanded by others. I order dresses in colours that I think suit me, I don’t have to observe my brother’s code of modesty, nor the court fashions. I order dinner at the time and with the food that I like; I don’t have to sit down in front of two hundred people who watch every single thing I do. When I want to ride out I can go as far and as fast as I like, I don’t have to consider my brother’s fears or my husband’s competitive spirit. If I call for musicians in the evening I can dance with my ladies or hear them sing, we don’t always have to follow the king’s tastes. We don’t have to marvel at his compositions. I can pray to a god of my own faith in the words that I choose. I can become myself, I can be: me.

I had thought that my heart would leap at the chance to be queen again. My chance to do my duty by this country, by its people, by the children who I have come to love, and perhaps even to win my mother’s approval and to fulfil my brother’s ambitions. But I find, to my own amusement, as I examine my thoughts—and at last I have the privacy and peace to examine my thoughts—that it may be a better thing to be a single woman with a good income in one of the finest palaces in England than to be one of Henry’s frightened queens.