‘So what happened?’

It is like a dream, this re-telling. It is the dream that comes to me often, that wakes me in the night like sickness, that sends me from my bed to walk and walk in the dark room until the first grey light comes into the sky and I know my ordeal is over.

‘They denied their guilt. That was not part of the plan. They should have confessed but they denied everything except saying some words against the king, George had said that the king was impotent.’ Even on this bright autumn day, five years after the trial, I still lower my voice and glance around me to make sure that no-one can hear. ‘Their courage failed them, they denied their guilt and did not ask for mercy. I stayed with the plan, as your uncle said I should. I saved the title, I saved the lands, I saved the Boleyn inheritance, I saved their fortune.’

Katherine is waiting for more. She does not understand that this is the end of the story. This is my great act and my triumph: I saved the title and the lands. She even looks puzzled.

‘I did what I had to do to save the Boleyn inheritance,’ I repeat. ‘My father-in-law, George and Anne’s father, had built a fortune over his lifetime. George had added to it. Anne’s wealth had gone into it. I saved it. I saved Rochford Hall for us, I kept the title. I am Lady Rochford still.’

‘You saved the inheritance, but they didn’t inherit it,’ Katherine says, uncomprehending. ‘Your husband died, and he must have thought you were giving evidence against him. He must have thought that while he was pleading not guilty, you were accusing him. You were a witness for his prosecution.’ Slowly she thinks, slowly she speaks, slowly she says the worst thing of all. ‘He must have thought that you let him go to his death so that you could keep the title and the lands, even though you had killed him.’

I could scream at her for saying this, for putting words to this nightmare. I rub my face with the back of my glove as if I would scrub my scowl away. ‘No. Not so! Not so! He won’t have thought that,’ I say desperately. ‘He knew that I loved him, that I was trying to save him. As he went to his death he would have known that I was on my knees before the king, asking him to spare my husband. When she went to her death she will have known that at the very last moment I was before the king, asking him to spare her.’

She nods. ‘Well, I hope you never bear witness to save me,’ she says. It is a miserable attempt at humour; I do not even accord it a smile.

‘It was the end of my life,’ I say simply. ‘It was not just the end of their lives, it was death to me too.’