KATHERINE, SYON ABBEY,

NOVEMBER 1541

Now, let me see, what do I have now?

I have to say, I’m not doing very well at all.

I have six French hoods edged with gold. I have six pairs of sleeves, I have six plain kirtles, I have six gowns, they are in navy blue, black, dark green and grey. I have no jewels, I have no toys. I don’t even have my kitten. Everything that the king gave me has been taken from my rooms by Sir Thomas Seymour—a Seymour! taking a Howard’s goods! Think how we shall resent that!—to be returned to the king. So, as it turns out, all the things I counted before were never really mine. They were loans and not gifts at all.

I have three rooms with very poor tapestries. My servants live in one and I live in the other two with my half-sister Isabel, Lady Baynton and two other ladies. None of them speaks to me for resentment at the position they find themselves in through my wickedness, except Isabel, who has been told to bring me to a sense of my sin. I have to say that this makes for very poor company in a confined space. My confessor is ready for my call should I be such a fool as to wish to hang myself by confessing to him what I have denied to everyone else and twice a day Isabel scolds me as if I were her servant. I have some books of prayers and the Bible. I have some sewing to do, shirts for the poor; but surely they must have enough shirts by now? I have no pageboys, or courtiers, or jesters or musicians or singers. Even my little dogs have been taken away and I know they will pine for me.

My friends are all gone. My uncle has disappeared like the mist in the morning, and they tell me that most of my household, Lady Rochford, and Francis Dereham, Katherine Tylney, and Joan Bulmer, Margaret Morton and Agnes Restwold, are in the Tower being questioned about me.

But even worse than all of this, I heard today that they have taken Thomas Culpepper to the Tower also. My poor, beautiful Thomas! The thought of him being arrested by some ugly man at arms is a horror, but the thought of my Thomas being questioned makes me fall to my knees and lie my face against the rough cloth of my bed and weep. If only we had run away when we first knew that we were in love. If only he had come for me before I even went to court, when I was still a girl at Lambeth. If only I had told him that I was his, only his when I first came to court, before all of this went wrong.

‘Do you want your confessor?’ Lady Baynton says coldly as she finds me weeping. They will have told her to say this, they are eager for me to break down and tell everything.