‘Spies and liars,’ I say bitterly. ‘Be warned. Don’t trust those stupid girls you have gathered around you.’

‘Who accused them?’ she asks, still puzzled. ‘Who could give such evidence?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, I am desperate to get away from her, from her determined hunt after these old truths. ‘It is too long ago, and I cannot remember, and if I could, I would not discuss it.’

I stride away from her, ignoring royal protocol, I cannot stand the dawning suspicion in her face. ‘Who could know?’ she repeats. But I have gone.

KATHERINE, HAMPTON COURT,

APRIL 1541

I am much reassured by all that I am learning, and I wish I had thought to ask before. I had always believed that my cousin Queen Anne had been caught with a lover and beheaded for that. Now I find that it was far more complicated than that, she was at the centre of a treasonous plot, too long ago for me to understand. I was afraid in case she and I were treading the same road to the same destination, I was afraid that I had inherited her wickedness. But it turns out that there was a great plot and even my Lady Rochford and her husband were tied up in it somehow. It will have been about religion, I daresay, for Anne was a furious Sacramentary, I think, whereas now everyone with any sense is for the old ways. So I think as long as I am very clever and very discreet that I can at least be friends with Thomas Culpepper, I can see him often, he can be my companion and my comforter, and nobody need know or think anything of it. And while he is a loyal servant of the king and while I am a good wife, then no harm will be done.

Cleverly, I call my cousin Catherine Carey to my side and tell her to sort embroidery silks into shades of colour for me, as if I am about to start sewing. If she had been longer at court she would know at once that this is a ruse since I have not touched a needle since I became queen, but she brings a stool and sits at my feet and puts one pink silk beside another, and we look at them together.

‘Has your mother ever told you what happened to her sister, Queen Anne?’ I ask quietly.

She looks up at me. She has hazel eyes, not as dark as the Boleyn shade. ‘Oh, I was there,’ she says simply.

‘You were there!’ I exclaim. ‘But I didn’t know anything about it!’

She smiles. ‘You were in the country, weren’t you? We are about the same age. But I was a child at court. My mother was lady in waiting to her sister Anne Boleyn, and I was maid in waiting.’

‘So what happened?’ I am almost choking with curiosity. ‘Lady Rochford will never tell me a thing! And she gets so cross when I ask.’