‘My love is hidden deep,’ he says.

‘Your love?’ I can hardly breathe for this.

‘My love,’ he repeats.

Lady Rochford comes up beside me. ‘We have to go in,’ she says. ‘It is going to rain.’

At once Thomas Culpepper turns around and leads me back towards the palace. ‘I don’t want to go in,’ I say stubbornly.

‘Go in, and then say you want to change your gown, and slip down the garden stairs from your privy chamber and I will wait for you in the doorway,’ he says very quietly.

‘You didn’t meet me last time we agreed.’

He chuckles. ‘You must forgive me for that, it was months ago. I shall meet you without fail this time. There is something very special that I want to do.’

‘And what is that?’

‘I want to see if I can make you say, “Oh, Thomas,” again.’

ANNE, RICHMOND PALACE,

MARCH 1541

Ambassador Harst has come to tell me the news from court. He has placed a young man as a servant in the king’s rooms and the boy says that the physicians attend the king every day and are struggling to keep the wound open so that the poison can drain from his leg. They are putting pellets of gold into the wound so that it cannot close, and tying the edges back with string, they are pulling at the poor man’s living flesh as if they were making a pudding.

‘He must be in agony,’ I say.

Dr Harst nods. ‘And he is in despair,’ he says. ‘He thinks he will never recover, he thinks his time is done, and he is sick with fear at leaving Prince Edward without a safe guardian. The Privy Council are thinking that they will have to form a regency.’

‘Who will he trust to guard the prince in his minority?’

‘He trusts nobody, and the prince’s family, the Seymours, are declared enemies of the queen’s family, the Howards. There is no doubt that they will tear the country apart between them. The Tudor peace will end as it began, in a war for the kingdom between the great families. The king fears for the people’s faith as well. The Howards are determined on the old religion and will take the country back to Rome; but Cranmer has the church behind him and will fight for reform.’

I nibble my finger, thinking. ‘Does the king still fear there is a plot to overthrow him?’

‘There is news of a new uprising in the North, in support of the old religion. The king fears that the men will come out again, that it will spread, he believes there are Papists everywhere calling for a rebellion against him.’

‘None of this endangers me? He will not turn against me?’

His tired face folds downwards into a grimace. ‘He might. He fears the Lutherans as well.’

‘But everybody knows I am a practising member of the king’s church!’ I protest. ‘I do everything to show that I conform to the king’s instructions.’