Dr Harst lengthens his pace to keep up with me, I am striding along as if I could get away from this kingdom on foot. ‘You are distressed,’ he says.

‘Who would not be?’ I glance around, we are speaking in German and cannot be understood, my pageboy has fallen behind us. ‘Why should the king have Lady Pole executed now? He has held her in the Tower for years. She could hardly be plotting against him! She has seen no-one but her jailers for years, he has already killed half her family and taken the rest into the Tower.’

‘He does not think she was plotting,’ he says quietly. ‘But this new uprising in the North is to restore the old religion, they are calling for the Pole family to be kings again. The family are faithful Papists and much loved, they come from the North, they are the royal family of York, the Plantagenets. They are of the old faith. The king will not tolerate any rival. Even an innocent rival.’

I shudder. ‘Then why does he not take a mission against the North?’ I demand. ‘He could lead an army to defeat the rebels. Why behead an old lady in London for their rebellion?’

‘They say that he has hated her since she took Queen Katherine of Aragon’s side against him,’ he says quietly. ‘When he was a young man he admired her and respected her, and she was the last Plantagenet princess, more royal than he is himself. But when he put the queen aside, Lady Pole took her side and declared for her.’

‘That was years ago.’

‘He does not forget an enemy.’

‘Why not fight the rebels as he did before?’

He lowers his voice. ‘They say he is afraid. Just as he was afraid before. He never fought them, he sent the duke, Thomas Howard, before. He will not go himself.’

I stride out and the ambassador keeps pace with me, my pageboy falls behind even more. ‘I shall never be really safe,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘Not while he lives.’

He nods. ‘You cannot trust his word,’ he says shortly. ‘And if you offend him, he never forgets it.’

‘D’you think all this—’ my gesture takes in the beautiful park, the river, the wonderful palace ‘—all this is just a sop? Something to keep me quiet, to keep my brother quiet, while the king makes his son on Katherine? And when she gives birth, and he crowns her queen, and he knows the deed is done, then he arrests me for treason or heresy or whatever offence he chooses to invent, and murders me too?’

The ambassador goes grey with fear at my suggestion. ‘God knows, I pray not. But we cannot know for sure,’ he says. ‘At the time I thought he wanted a lasting settlement, and a lasting friendship with you. But we cannot know. With this king one can know nothing. Indeed, he could have intended friendship then, and he could change tomorrow. That is what they all say about him. That he is fearful and changeable, they never know who he will see as his enemy. We cannot trust him.’