He turns and translates and the duke’s dark eyes gleam at my mistake. ‘Except it was not renounced,’ he reminds me.

I nod. ‘I forgot.’

He shows me a wintry smile. ‘I know you cannot command your brother,’ he concedes.

I turn to Richard Beard again. ‘Please point out to His Grace that this letter from my brother actually proves that I have honoured the king, since it makes clear that he has so little faith in me that he threatens me with being cut off from my family forever.’ Richard Beard translates and the duke’s cold smile widens slightly.

‘What he thinks and what he does, how he blusters and threatens me, is clearly not of my choosing,’ I conclude.

Thank God, they may be the king’s council, but they do not share his unreasonable terrors, they do not see plots where there are none—except when it suits them, of course. Only when it suits them to be rid of an enemy like Thomas Cromwell, or a rival like poor Lord Lisle, do they exaggerate the king’s fears and assure him that they are real. The king is in perpetual anxiety about one conspiracy or another and the council play on his fears like a master might tune a lute. Provided that I am neither threat nor rival to any one of them they will not alert any royal fears about me. So the frail peace between the king and I is not broken by my brother’s intemperate speech. I wonder did he even stop for a moment to think if his letter would put me in such danger? Worse still, I wonder, did he intend to put me in such danger?

‘Do you think your brother will make trouble for us?’ Norfolk asks me simply.

I answer him in German. ‘Not for my sake, sir. He would do nothing for me. He has never done anything for my benefit, except to let me go. He might use me as the excuse but I am not his cause. And even if he meant to make trouble, I doubt very much that the Holy Roman Emperor would go to war with the King of England over a fourth wife, when the king has already helped himself to his fifth.’

Richard Beard translates this and both he and Norfolk have to hide their amusement. ‘I have your word then,’ the duke says shortly.

I nod. ‘You do. And I never break my word. I shall make no trouble for the king. I wish to live here alone, in peace.’

He looks around, he is something of a connoisseur of beautiful buildings. He has built his own great house and he has torn down some fine abbeys. ‘You are happy here?’

‘I am,’ I say, and I am telling the truth. ‘I am happy here.’

JANE BOLEYN, HAMPTON COURT,

OCTOBER 1540

I should have warned Lady Margaret Douglas not to meddle with a man who was certain to land her in trouble, but I was so absorbed with trying to keep Katherine Howard steady in her first days of marriage that I did not watch the ladies as I should have done. Besides, Lady Margaret is the king’s own niece, daughter of his sister. Who would have thought that his hard, suspicious gaze would fall on her? In the first days of his marriage? When he told us all that for the first time in his long life he had found happiness? Why, in those honeymoon weeks, should I have thought that he would plot his own niece’s arrest?