He pulls her about before the whole court, he is without embarrassment in his treatment of her. When they are at dinner, before everyone, he will reach over and tweak at her breast and watch the colour rise to her face. He asks her for a kiss and when she offers him her cheek he will suck on her mouth, and we can see his sly hand pat her rump. She never pulls away from him, she never steps back. When I look very carefully I can see her stiffen at his touch; but she never does anything that could enrage him. For a fifteen-year-old girl she does very well. For a girl passionately in love with another man she does very well indeed.

Whatever secret moments she manages to snatch with Culpepper between dinner and dancing, midnight finds her always in her bed, her gorgeous nightgown loosely tied, her white nightcap making her eyes look large and luminous: a sleepy angel, waiting for the king. If he is late coming to her bed she sometimes falls asleep. She sleeps like a child, and has a habit of smoothing her cheek across the pillow as she lies down her head, it is very endearing. He comes in his nightshirt with his thick robe around his broad shoulders, his bad leg heavily bandaged but the stain of the pus seeping through the white dressing. Most nights Thomas Culpepper is at his side, the heavy royal hand leaning heavily on the young man’s shoulder for support. Culpepper and Katherine never exchange so much as one look when he brings her old husband to her bed. He gazes up at the bedhead behind her, where the king’s initials are carved, entwined with hers, and she looks down at the silky embroidered sheets. He takes the king’s cape from his fat shoulders, while a groom of the bedchamber raises the sheets. Two pages haul the king upwards to the bed and steady him as he balances on his only good leg. The stench of the suppurating wound fills the bedchamber and Katherine never flinches. Her smile is steady and welcoming and the king’s groan as he gets into bed, and they gently thrust his legs under the covers, does not shake her composure. We all leave, reverently stepping backwards, and only when we have closed the door on them do I glance across to Thomas Culpepper and I see that his young face is twisted with a scowl.

‘You want her,’ I say quietly to him.

He glances at me with a denial on his lips, but then he shrugs and says nothing.

‘She wants you,’ I volunteer.

At once he snatches me by the elbow and draws me so that we are in the window bay, almost wrapped up in the thick curtain. ‘She says this to you? She has told you this in so many words?’

‘She has.’

‘When has she said such a thing to you? What did she say?’

‘She comes out of her bedroom when the king has fallen asleep most nights. I take off her nightcap, I brush her hair, sometimes she is almost crying.’