‘I am yours heart and soul,’ he says, and I feel that disloyal, betraying, irresistible flicker of desire. He loves me still, he must love me still, otherwise why would he come to serve me? And though we parted on bad terms, I remember his touch and the utter breathtaking excitement of his kisses, and the slide of his naked thigh between mine when he first came to my bed, and the insistent pressing of his lust, which was never resisted.

‘Take heed what words you speak,’ I say, and he smiles at me as if he knows as well as I do what I am thinking.

‘Take heed what you remember,’ he says.

JANE BOLEYN, PONTEFRACT CASTLE,

AUGUST 1541

The two young men, and half a dozen others, each of them with good reason to believe that they are the queen’s favourites, circle her every day and the court has all the tension of a whorehouse before a brawl. The queen, excited by the attention she gets at every corner, at every hunt and breakfast and masque, is like a child who has stayed up too late; she is feverish with arousal. On the one hand she has Thomas Culpepper, holding her when she dismounts from her horse, at her side for dancing, whispering in her ear when she plays cards, first to greet her in the morning, and last to leave her rooms at night. On the other she has young Dereham, appointed to wait for her orders, at her right hand with his little writing desk, as if she ever dictated a letter to anyone, constantly whispering to her, stepping forwards to advise, ever present where he need not be. And then, how many others? A dozen? Twenty? Not even Anne Boleyn at her most capricious had so many young men circling her, like dogs slavering at a butcher’s door. But Anne, even at her most flirtatious, never appeared to be a girl who might bestow her favours for a smile, who might be seduced by a song, by a poem, by a word. The whole court begins to see that the queen’s joy, which has made the king so happy, is not that of an innocent girl whom he so fondly believes adores only him, it is that of a flirt who revels in constant male attention.

Of course there is trouble, there is almost a fight. One of the senior men at court tells Dereham that he should have risen from the dinner table and gone, since he is not of the queen’s council and only they are sitting over their wine. Dereham, loose-mouthed, says that he was in the queen’s counsels long before the rest of us knew her, and will be familiar with her long after the rest of us are dismissed. Of course: uproar. The terror is that it might get to the king’s ears and so Dereham is summoned to the queen’s rooms and she sees him, with me standing by.