‘You were brought in as a Protestant princess,’ he says. ‘And the man who brought you in paid with his life. I am fearful.’

‘What can we do?’ I ask.

‘I shall keep watch on the king,’ he says. ‘While he acts against the Papists we are safe enough, but if he turns against the reformers we should make sure that we can get home, if we need to.’

I give a little shudder, thinking of the mad tyranny of my brother as opposed to the mad tyranny of this king. ‘I have no home there.’

‘You may have no home here.’

‘The king has promised me my safety,’ I say.

‘He promised you the throne,’ the ambassador says wryly. ‘And who sits there now?’

‘I don’t envy her.’ I am thinking of her husband brooding on his wrongs, trapped in his bed by his suppurating wound, counting his enemies and allocating blame, while his fever burns and his sense of injustice grows more mad.

‘I should think no woman in the world would envy her,’ the ambassador replies.

JANE BOLEYN, HAMPTON COURT,

APRIL 1541

‘What actually happened to Anne Boleyn?’ the child-queen horrifies me by asking as we walk back from Mass early one morning in April. The king was, as usual, absent from the royal box and for once she was not peering over the edge of the box to see Culpepper. She even closed her eyes during the prayers as if praying, and she seemed thoughtful. Now this.

‘She was accused of treason,’ I say coolly. ‘Surely, you know that?’

‘Yes, but why? Exactly why? What happened?’

‘You should ask your grandmother, or the duke,’ I say.

‘Weren’t you there?’

Was I not there? Was I not there for every agonising second of it all? ‘Yes, I was at court,’ I say.

‘Don’t you remember?’

As if it were engraved on my skin with a knife. ‘Oh, I remember. But I don’t like to talk of it. Why would you seek to know of the past? It means nothing now.’

‘But it’s not as if it were a secret,’ she presses me. ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of, is there?’

I swallow on a dry throat. ‘No, nothing. But it cost me my sister-in-law and my husband and our good name.’

‘Why did they execute your husband?’

‘He was accused of treason with her, and the other men.’

‘I thought that the other men were accused of adultery?’

‘It’s the same thing,’ I say tersely. ‘If the queen takes a lover that is treason to the king. D’you see? Now can we speak of something else?’

‘Then why did they execute her brother, your husband?’

I grit my teeth. ‘They were accused of being lovers,’ I say grimly. ‘Now do you see why I don’t want to speak of it? Why no-one wants to speak of it? So can we say no more of it?’

She does not even hear my tone, she is so shocked. ‘They accused her of taking her brother as a lover?’ she demanded. ‘How could they think she would do such a thing? How could they have evidence of such a thing?’