KATHERINE, HAMPTON COURT,

OCTOBER 1540

Like a fool I am in the privy garden at half past nine. I cannot trust anybody with the secret that I am meeting Thomas Culpepper, so I send my ladies to my rooms ahead of me as soon as I hear the clock strike ten. Within a minute of them leaving, the door in the wall opens and he comes in.

He walks like a young man. He does not drag his fat leg like the king. He walks on the balls of his feet like a dancer, as if he were ready to run or to fight at a moment’s notice. I find I am smiling in silence, and he comes to my side and looks at me, saying nothing. We look at each other for a long time and for once I am not thinking what I should say, nor even how I look. I just drink in the sight of him.

‘Thomas,’ I breathe, and his name is so sweet that my voice comes out all dreamy.

‘Your Grace,’ he says back.

Gently he takes my hand and raises it to his lips. At the last moment, as he touches his lips to my fingers, he looks at me with those piercing blue eyes and I can feel my knees go quite weak, just at this slight touch.

‘Are you well?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Oh, yes. Are you?’

He nods. We stand, as if the music has just stopped in a dance, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes.

‘The king?’ I ask. For a moment I had forgotten all about him.

‘Better this morning,’ he says. ‘The physician came and purged him last night and he laboured painfully for some hours but now he has passed a great motion and is better for it.’

I turn my head away at the very thought of it and Thomas gives a little laugh. ‘I am sorry. I am too accustomed; all of us in his rooms are accustomed to talk in much detail about his health. I did not mean . . .’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I have to know all about it too.’

‘I suppose it is natural, once one reaches such a great age . . .’

‘My grandmama is his age and she does not talk about purges all the time, nor does she smell of the privy.’

He laughs again. ‘Well, I swear that if I ever get to forty I shall drown myself. I couldn’t bear to grow old and flatulent.’

I laugh now, at the thought of this radiant young man growing old and flatulent. ‘You will be as fat as the king,’ I predict. ‘And surrounded by adoring great-grandchildren and an old wife.’

‘Oh I don’t expect to marry.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I can’t imagine it.’

‘Why ever not?’

He looks at me intently. ‘I am so much in love. I am too much in love. I can only think of one woman, and she is not free.’