‘I shall consider your confession,’ he says. ‘I shall take it to God in prayer. I have to tell the king. We will consider what charges you will have to face.’

‘Can’t we just forget that it all happened?’ I whisper, my hands twisting together, the rings heavy on my fingers. ‘It was so long ago. It was years ago. Nobody can even remember it. The king doesn’t need to know, you said yourself, it will break his heart. Just tell him that nothing important happened, and can’t everything be as it was?’

He looks at me as if I am quite mad. ‘Queen Katherine,’ he says gently. ‘You have betrayed the King of England. The punishment is death. Can you not understand that?’

‘But this was all long before I was married,’ I whimper. ‘It wasn’t betraying the king. I hadn’t even met him. Surely the king will forgive me for my errors as a girl?’ I can feel the sobs coming up into my throat, and I can’t hold them back. ‘Surely he won’t cruelly judge me for my childhood errors when I was nothing but a little girl with poor guardians?’ I gulp. ‘Surely, His Grace will be kind to me? He has loved me and I have made him so happy. He thanked God for me, and this, this is nothing.’ The tears are pouring down my face, I am not pretending to be sorry, I am absolutely appalled to be here, facing this awful man, having to twist myself up in lies to make things look better. ‘Please, sir, please forgive me. Please tell the king that I have done nothing that matters.’

The archbishop pulls away from me. ‘Calm yourself. Calm yourself. We will say no more now.’

‘Say you will forgive me, say that the king will forgive me.’

‘I hope he will, I hope he can. I hope you can be saved.’

I grab on to him, sobbing without control. ‘You cannot go until you promise me I will be safe.’

He drags himself to the door though I am clinging to him like a wailing child. ‘Madam, you must be calm.’

‘How can I be calm when you tell me that the king is angry with me? When you tell me that the punishment is death? How can I be calm? How can I be calm? I’m only sixteen, I can’t be accused, I can’t be . . .’

‘Let me go, madam, this behaviour does not serve you.’

‘You shan’t go without blessing me.’

He pushes me from him and then crosses the air rapidly above my head. ‘There. There you are, in nomine . . . filii . . . there, now be quiet.’

I throw myself down on the floor to sob but I hear the door close behind him, and even though he is not there to see me, I cannot stop crying. Even when the inner door opens and my ladies come in, I am still crying. Even when they flutter round me and pat me on the head I do not sit up and cheer up. I am so afraid now, I am so afraid.