We have to be careful, we have to be as careful as if our very lives depended on it. But every time we move to a new place Lady Rochford finds a private way to my rooms, and tells Thomas how it is to be done. Without fail he comes to me, he loves me as I love him. We go to my room and Lady Rochford guards the door for us, and all night I lie in his arms and we kiss and whisper and make promises of love that will last forever. At dawn she makes a little scratch on the door and I get up and we kiss, and he slips away like a ghost. Nobody sees him. Nobody sees him come, and nobody sees him go, it is a wonderful secret.

Of course the girls talk, this is a most unruly crowd. I cannot believe that they would dare to chatter such gossip and scandal if Queen Anne were still on the throne. But because it is only me and most of them are older than me, and so many are from the old days at Lambeth, they have no respect at all, and they laugh at me, and they tease me about Francis Dereham, and I am afraid that they watch what time I go to bed and wonder that my only companion is Lady Rochford, and that the door to my bedroom is locked and no-one can come in.

‘They know nothing,’ she assures me. ‘And they would tell nobody, anyway.’

‘They should not be gossiping at all,’ I say. ‘Can you not tell them to keep their tongues off my business?’

‘How can I, when it was you laughing about Francis Dereham with Joan Bulmer, yourself?’

‘Well, I never laugh about Thomas,’ I say. ‘I never mention his name. I don’t even say his name in the confessional. I don’t even say his name to myself.’

‘That is wise,’ she says. ‘Keep it a secret. Keep it a complete secret.’

She is brushing my hair and she gives a little pause and looks at me in the mirror. ‘When is your course due?’ she asks.

‘I can’t remember.’ I never keep count. ‘Was it last week? Anyway, it hasn’t come.’

There is a sort of bright alertness in her face. ‘It has not come?’

‘No. Brush at the back, Jane, Thomas likes it smooth at the back.’

Her hand moves but she does not do it very carefully. ‘Do you feel at all sick?’ she asks. ‘Are your breasts any bigger?’

‘No,’ I say. Then I realise what is in her mind. ‘Oh! Are you thinking I might be with child?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Please God.’

‘But that would be dreadful!’ I exclaim. ‘Because, don’t you see? Don’t you think? Lady Rochford, it might not be the king’s child!’

She puts down the brush and shakes her head. ‘It is God’s will,’ she says slowly, as if she wants me to learn something. ‘If you are married to the king and you conceive a child then that is God’s will. It is God’s will that the king has a child. So it is the king’s child, as far as you are concerned, it is the king’s own child, whatever has happened between you and another.’