‘Your Grace,’ he says very quietly. ‘I am so much grieved to discover that you have employed the man Francis Dereham in your household.’

For a moment I am so amazed that I don’t say anything. Everyone knows this. Good God, Francis has caused enough trouble at court for everyone to know it. He has hardly been discreet. How should the archbishop discover it? As well as claim to discover Hull! ‘Well, yes,’ I say. ‘As everyone knows.’

Down go his eyes again, clasp go his hands together over his cassocked tummy. ‘We know that you had relations with Dereham when you were at your grandmother’s house,’ he says. ‘He has confessed it.’

Oh! The fool. Now I cannot deny it. Why would he say such a thing? Why would he be such a slack-mouthed braggart?

‘What are we to suppose, but that you put your paramour in a position close to you for a bad purpose?’ he asks. ‘Where you could meet every day? Where he could come to you without your ladies being present? Even unannounced?’

‘Well, suppose nothing,’ I say pertly enough. ‘And he isn’t my paramour anyway. Where is the king? I want to see him.’

‘You were Dereham’s lover at Lambeth, you were not a virgin when you married the king, and you were his lover after your marriage,’ he says. ‘You are an adulteress.’

‘No!’ I say again. The truth is all muddled up with a lie, and besides, I don’t know what they know for sure. If only Francis had been born with the sense to shut up. ‘Where is the king? I insist that I see him!’

‘It is the king himself who has ordered me to inquire into your conduct,’ he says. ‘You cannot see him until you have answered my questions and your name is cleared without blemish.’

‘I shall see him!’ I jump to my feet. ‘You shan’t keep me from my husband. It has to be against the law!’

‘Anyway, he has gone.’

‘Gone?’ For a moment it feels as if the floor has rocked under my quick feet as if I were dancing on a barge. ‘Gone? Where has he gone? He can’t have gone. We’re staying here until we go to Whitehall for Christmas. There is nowhere else to go to, he wouldn’t just leave me here. Where has he gone?’

‘He has gone to Oatlands Palace.’

‘To Oatlands?’ This is the house where we were married. He would never go there without me. ‘That is a lie! When did he go? This cannot be true!’

‘I had to tell him, it was the greatest sadness of my life, that you had been Dereham’s lover and that I fear you are his lover still,’ Cranmer says. ‘God knows I would have spared him that news. I thought he would lose his mind for grief, you have broken his heart, I think. He left for Oatlands at once, taking only the smallest household. He will see no-one, you have broken his heart and ruined yourself.’