‘I don’t want you,’ he remarks. ‘Nobody wants you. And the last man you promised to love died because of your testament. You are a foul thing, Jane Boleyn, the axeman can finish what the devil has started for all I care.’ He pauses with his hand on the door, as a thought strikes him. ‘I should think you will be beheaded on Tower Green, where they killed Anne,’ he says. ‘There’s an irony for you. I should think she and her brother are laughing in hell, waiting for you.’

ANNE, RICHMOND PALACE,

NOVEMBER 1541

They have moved Kitty Howard to Syon Abbey and she is kept as a prisoner, with only a few of her ladies. They have arrested two young men from her grandmother’s household and they will be tortured until they confess what they know, and then they will be tortured until they confess what they are required to say. Her ladies who were in her confidence are taken to the Tower for questioning too. His Grace the king has returned from his private musing at Oatlands Palace and has come back to Hampton Court. He is said to be very quiet, very grieved, but not angry. We must thank God that he is not angry. If he does not fly into one of his vindictive rages then he might sink into self-pity and banish her. He is going to annul his marriage to the queen on the grounds of her abominable behaviour—those are the very words he has put to parliament. Please God that they will agree with him that she is not fit to be queen, and the poor child can be released, and her friends go home.

She could go to France, she would be a delight to that court, who would find her vanity and her prettiness a pleasure to watch. Or perhaps she could be persuaded to live in the country as I do, and call herself another sister to the king. She might even come and live with me and we could be friends as we used to be in the old days when I was the queen he did not want, and she was the maid that he did. She could be sent away to a thousand different places where she could do the king no harm and where her folly might make people laugh, and where she might grow into a sensible woman. Surely, everyone agrees that she cannot be executed. She is simply too young to be executed. This is not an Anne Boleyn, who schemed and contrived her way to the throne over six years of striving, and was then thrown down by her own ambition. This is a girl with no more judgement than one of her kittens. Nobody could be so harsh as to send a child like this to the block. Thank God, the king is sad and not angry. Please God, the parliament will advise him that the marriage can be annulled, and pray heaven that Archbishop Cranmer is satisfied with the disgrace of the queen on the basis of her childhood amours, and does not start to investigate her follies since her marriage.