‘He is a nightmare!’ I burst out. ‘He will do anything he wishes, he can do anything he wishes. He is a danger. He is a terror.’

The sober ambassador does not correct me for exaggeration. Chillingly he nods. ‘He is a terror,’ he agrees. ‘This man is the terror of his people. Thank God you are away from him. God help his young wife.’

JANE BOLEYN, HAMPTON COURT,

JUNE 1541

The king, though he looks older and drawn, is at least returned to court and lives like a king instead of a sickly patient once more. His temper is a curse to his servants, and his rages can shake the court. The poison in his leg and in his bowels spills over into his nature. His Privy Council tiptoe in fear of offending him, as in the morning he will say one thing, and in the evening be a passionate advocate of the opposite course. He acts as if he cannot remember the morning and nobody dares to remind him. Whoever disagrees with him is disloyal, and the accusation of treason hangs in the air like the stink from his wound. This is a court of habitual change-coats but I have never before seen men fling away their opinions with such speed. The king contradicts himself every day and they fall into agreement with him, whatever he thinks.

His execution of the Countess of Salisbury has shaken us all, even the most hard-hearted. All of us knew her, all of us were proud to be her friend when she was the great friend and ally of Queen Katherine, and the last of our royal family of York. Easy enough to forget her when she fell from favour and was out of sight in the country. Harder to ignore her silent presence when she was in the Tower and everyone knew that she was ill-housed, and cold, and underfed, mourning her family, as even her little grandsons disappeared into the locked rooms of the Tower. Unbearable, when the king moves without warning against her, has her dragged from her bed without notice, and butchered on the block.

They say she ran from the axe, she did not make a dignified speech and lie down for him. She confessed nothing but insisted on her innocence. She fell on the scaffold and crawled to get away and the axeman had to run after her, raining down blows on her neck. It makes me shudder to hear it, it makes me sick to my soul to hear it. She crawled away from the same block that they brought out for Anne. How many women’s heads will he put on it? Who will be next?

Katherine copes with this new irritable Henry better than one might hope. She has no interest in either religion or power so he does not speak to her of his policy and she does not know that his morning decisions are overturned by nightfall. Without an idea in her head she never argues with him. He treats her like a little pet, a lapdog, there for his caress, that can be sent away when it annoys him. She responds well to this and has the sense to hide her feelings for Culpepper under a veil of wifely devotion. Besides, what master would bother to ask a lapdog if she dreams of something better?