‘You knew that was a lie.’ He shakes me like a terrier shakes a rat. ‘You knew, you liar. You never took the stand to save him. You took the stand to save your title and your fortune, you called it your inheritance, the Boleyn inheritance. You knew that if you turned evidence against your own husband then the king would leave you with your title and your lands. That’s all you wanted in the end. That’s all you cared for. You sent that young man and that beauty, his sister, to the gallows so that you could save your own yellow skin and your paltry title. You sent them to their deaths, a savage death, for being beautiful and merry and happy in each other’s company and for excluding you. You are a byword for malice, jealousy and twisted lust. D’you think any man would trust you with a title again? D’you think any man would risk calling you wife? After that?’

‘I was going to save him.’ I bare my teeth at the two of us in the mirror. ‘I accused him so that he could confess and be pardoned. I would have saved him.’

‘You are a killer worse than the king,’ he says brutally, and throws me to one side. I rebound off the wall and grab at the tapestry to steady myself. ‘You testified against your own sister-in-law and husband, you stood by the sickbed while Jane Seymour died, you testified against Anne of Cleves and would have seen her beheaded, and now, without a doubt, you will see another cousin go to the gallows, and I confidently expect you to bear witness against her.’

‘I loved him,’ I say stubbornly, going to the only charge that I cannot bear to hear. ‘You shall not deny that I loved George. I loved him with all my heart.’

‘Then you are worse than a liar and a false friend,’ he says coldly. ‘For your love brought the man you love to a most pitiable death. Your love is worse than hatred. Dozens hated George Boleyn but it was your loving word that took him to his death. Don’t you see how evil you are?’

‘If he had stood by me, if he had cleaved to me, I would have saved him,’ I cry out from my own pain. ‘If he had loved me as he loved her, if he had let me into his life, if I had been as dear to him as she was . . .’

‘He would never have stood by you,’ the duke says with contempt like poison in his voice. ‘He would never have loved you. Your father bought him for you with a fortune, but nobody and no fortune could make you lovable. George despised you, and Anne and Mary laughed at you. That’s why you accused them, none of this high-flying, self-sacrificing lie has a shred of truth. You accused them, because if you could not have George you would rather have seen him dead than loving his sister.’