I am breathless. ‘Can you? Does she know?’

He smiles at me. ‘I don’t know. D’you think I should tell her?’

The door behind me opens and Lady Rochford is there. ‘Your Grace?’

‘Here is Thomas Culpepper come to tell me that the king has been purged and is better for it,’ I say brightly, my voice high and thin. I turn back to him, I dare not meet his eyes. ‘Will you ask His Grace if I may visit him today?’

He bows without looking at me. ‘I will ask him at once,’ he says, and goes quickly from the garden.

‘What d’you know of Lady Margaret and your brother Charles?’ Lady Rochford demands.

‘Nothing,’ I lie at once.

‘Has she asked you to speak to the king for her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘Yes. I am hoping that he will be pleased.’

She shakes her head. ‘Take care how you do it,’ she warns me. ‘It may be that he is not pleased.’

‘Why should he not be pleased?’ I ask. ‘I think it is lovely. She is so pretty and a Tudor! It is such a high match for my brother!’

Lady Rochford looks at me. ‘The king may think it a high match for your brother too,’ she says. ‘He may think it too high. You may need to use all your charm and all your skills to persuade him to allow them to marry. If you want to save your brother and advance your family, you had better manage him as well as you have ever done. You had better choose your time and be very persuasive. You must do this, your uncle would like it.’

I make a little face at her. ‘I can do it,’ I say confidently. ‘I shall tell the king that it is my wish that they be happy and he will grant my wish. Voilà!’

‘Voilà perhaps,’ she says sourly, the old cat.

* * *

But then it all goes wrong. I think I shall tell the king when I see him that night, and Lady Margaret agrees to follow me in and beg for his forgiveness. Actually, we are both quite excited, certain that it will go well. I am going to plead and she is going to cry. But before dinner Thomas Culpepper comes to my rooms with a message to say that the king will see me on the morrow. I agree and go to my dinner—why should I care? The king has missed dinner so many times I don’t think that it matters. Certainly he’s not going to fade away in a hurry. But poor me! It does matter, for while I am at dinner, and dancing actually, someone pours poison in the king’s ear about his niece and even about me and poor management of my rooms, and voilà!

JANE BOLEYN, HAMPTON COURT,

OCTOBER 1540

The king marches into her private rooms and jerks his head at the three of us ladies in waiting, and says, ‘Outside’, as if we were dogs for his ordering. We scuttle from the rooms like whipped hounds and linger at the half-closed door and hear the terrifying rumble of royal rage. The king, out of bed for only half a day, knows everything and is most displeased.