My lord duke gives me a long, hard look at dinner but says nothing, and I know that he expects me to get our little bitch serviced and in pup. A son would raise the king from his melancholy, and secure the crown for the Howard family forever. We have to do it this time. We have to manage it. No other family in the world has had two attempts at such a prize. We cannot fail twice.

In her pique Katherine summons musicians to the ladies’ chamber and dances with her women and the people of her household. It isn’t very merry and two of the wilder girls, Joan and Agnes, run down to the dining hall and invite some men from the court. When I see they have done this I send a page for Thomas Culpepper to see if he will be fool enough to come. He is.

I see her face as he comes into the room, the rise of her colour, and then how quickly she turns away and speaks to little Catherine Carey at her side. Plainly, she is quite besotted with him and for a moment I remember that she is not just a pawn in our game, but a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. To see little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman. It would be very endearing if she were not Queen of England and a Howard with work to do.

Thomas Culpepper joins the set of dancers and places himself so that he will partner the queen when the couples pair off. She looks down at the ground to hide her smile of pleasure and to affect modesty, but when the dance brings them together and she takes his hand her eyes come up to him and they gaze at each other with absolute longing.

I glance round, nobody else seems to have noticed, and indeed half the queen’s ladies are making sheep’s eyes at one young man or another. I glance across at Lady Rutland and raise my eyebrows, she nods and goes to the queen and speaks quietly in her ear. Katherine scowls like a disappointed child, and then turns to the musicians. ‘This must be the last dance,’ she says sulkily. But she turns and her hand goes out, almost without her volition, to Thomas Culpepper.

KATHERINE, HAMPTON COURT,

MARCH 1541

Every day I see him and every day we are a little bolder with each other. The king still has not come out from his rooms, and his circle of physicians and doctors and the old men who advise him hardly ever come to my rooms so it is as if we are free in these days—just us young people together. The court is quiet with no dancing and no entertainment, since it is Lent. I cannot even have dancing privately in my rooms any more. We cannot hunt, nor boat on the river, nor play games, nor anything amusing. But we are allowed to walk in the gardens, or by the river after Mass, and when I am walking Thomas Culpepper walks beside me, and I would rather walk with him than dance dressed in my best with a prince.