Little Kitty Howard, alas, does not improve as a result of great position. But nobody, except her adoring husband, ever thought she would. Her uncle the duke keeps a strict eye on her public behaviour, and relies on me to watch her in private. More than once he has summoned her to his rooms for a fierce lecture on propriety and the behaviour expected of a queen. She breaks down into the penitent tears that are so easy for her. And he, relieved that—unlike Anne—she does not argue, or throw his own behaviour back at him, or cite the polite manners of the French court, or laugh in his face, thinks the deed is done. But the very next week there is a romp in the queen’s rooms when the young courtiers chase the girls all around the queen’s chambers, her own bedroom as well, smacking them with pillows and the queen is in the midst of it all, screaming and dancing on the bed and awarding points in the joust of the pillows. So what is to be done?

No power on earth can make a sensible woman out of Katherine Howard because there is nothing to work on. She is lacking in education or training or even common sense. God knows what the duchess thought she was doing with the young people in her house. She sent Katherine to music lessons—where she was kissed by the music master—but she never taught her to read or write or to reckon accounts. The child has no languages, she cannot read a score—despite the attentions of Henry Manox—she can sing with a thin little voice, she can dance like a whore, she is learning to ride. What else? No, nothing else. That is all.

She has wit enough to please a man, and some of her late-night foolery in Norfolk House has taught her a handful of whorish tricks. Thank God, she sets herself to please the king, and she succeeds beyond belief. He has taken it into his head that she is a perfect girl. In his eyes she has replaced the daughter he never loved, the virgin bride that his brother had first, the wife he was never sure of. For a man who has two daughters of his own, and wedded and bedded four women, he certainly has a lot of dreams unfulfilled. Katherine is to be the one who finally makes him happy, and he does everything to convince himself that she is the girl who can do it.

The duke summons me to his rooms every week, he leaves nothing to chance with this Howard girl, having lost control of the previous two Boleyns.

‘Is she behaving herself?’ he asks curtly.

I nod. ‘She is wild with the girls of her chamber, but she says nothing and does nothing to which you could seriously object in public.’

He sniffs. ‘Never mind if I object. Is there anything to which the king could object?’

I pause. Who knows what the king could object to? ‘She has done nothing to dishonour herself or her high calling,’ I say cautiously.