‘I cannot have you causing trouble in my household,’ she says stiffly to him.

He bows but his eyes are bright with confidence. ‘I meant to cause no trouble, I am yours: heart and soul.’

‘It is all very well to say that,’ she says irritably. ‘But I don’t want people asking what I was to you, and you were to me.’

‘We were in love,’ he maintains staunchly.

‘This should never be said,’ I interpose. ‘She is the queen. Her previous life must be as if it had never been.’

He looks at her, ignoring me. ‘I will never deny it.’

‘It is over,’ she says determinedly, I am proud of her. ‘And I will not have gossip about the past, Francis. I cannot have people talking about me. I shall have to send you away if you cannot keep silent.’

He pauses for a moment. ‘We were husband and wife before God,’ he says quietly. ‘You cannot deny that.’

She makes a little gesture with her hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she says helplessly. ‘At any rate, it is over now. You can have a place at court only if you never speak of it. Can’t he, Lady Rochford?’

‘Can you keep your mouth shut?’ I ask. ‘Never mind all this never denying it nonsense. You can stay if you can keep your mouth shut. If you are a braggart you will have to go.’

He looks at me without warmth, there is no love between us. ‘I can keep my mouth shut,’ he says.

ANNE, RICHMOND PALACE,

SEPTEMBER 1541

It has been a good summer for me, my first as a free woman in England. The farms attached to my palace are in good heart and I have ridden out and watched the crops ripen, and in the fruit orchards the trees are growing heavy with fruit. This is a rich country, we have built great stacks of hay to feed the animals through the winter, and in the barns we are piling up great mountains of grain to go to the miller for flour. If the country was ruled by a man who wanted peace, and who would share the wealth, then it would be a peaceful and prosperous land.

The king’s hatred of both Papists and Protestants sours the life of his country. In the church when they raise the Host even the smallest children are trained to keep their eyes on it, and bob their heads and cross themselves by rote, and are threatened by their parents that if they do not do as the king demands, then they will be taken away and burned. There is no understanding of the sanctity of the act among the poor people, they just know that it is the king’s desire now that they should bob and bow and bless themselves, just as before they had to hear the Mass in English, not Latin, and they had a Bible put in the church for anyone to read, and now it has been taken away again. The king commands the church just as the king commands more and more unjust taxation: because he can, because no-one can dare to stop him, because now it is treason even to question him.