This foreshadows Katherine’s fate. I know it and I am on my knees for her every day. If the men accused of loving her are to be killed in the cruellest way that England can devise, then the chances of her being forgiven and released are slight indeed. I am afraid she will spend the rest of her life in the Tower. Dear God, she is only sixteen now. Do they not think that two years ago she was too young to judge? Did her own uncle not think that a girl of fourteen is not likely to resist temptation when she is constantly encouraged to indulge her whims in everything? I don’t even consider what Henry thought, Henry is a madman. He thought of nothing but his own pleasure in her, and his own belief that she adored him. That is what she will pay for: for disappointing the vain dreams of a madman. As I did.

When I turned away from him in disgust at Rochester he hated me for it, and he punished me for it as soon as he could, calling me ugly and fat with slack breasts and belly, no virgin, full of noisome airs, stinking in fact. When Kitty chooses a young handsome man over his bloated, rotting body he calls her a scandal and a whore. He punishes me with shame and exile from the court, and then takes pleasure in showing his generosity. I don’t think she will get off so lightly.

I am on my knees in my privy chamber at my prie-dieu when I hear the door behind me open quietly. I am so afraid of my shadow in these dangerous days that I spin around. It is Lotte, my lady secretary, and her face is white.

‘What is it?’ I am on my feet at once. Stumbling as my heel catches the hem of my gown, I nearly fall and have to catch on to the little altar to save myself. The cross wobbles and crashes down to the floor.

‘They have arrested your maid Frances, and they have taken your squire Richard Taverner too.’

I gasp in terror, and then I wait until I can breathe out again. She mistakes my blank face for incomprehension and she repeats the awful thing she has just said in German: ‘They have arrested your lady in waiting Frances, and they have taken Richard Taverner too.’

‘On what charges?’ I whisper.

‘They don’t say. The inquisitors are in the house now. We are all to be questioned.’

‘They must have said something.’

‘Just that we are all to be questioned. Even you.’

I am icy with fear. ‘Quick,’ I say. ‘Go to the stables at once and get a boy to take a boat downriver to Dr Harst in London. Tell him that I am in grave danger. Go at once. Go by the garden stairs and make sure no-one sees you.’

She nods and goes to the little private door to the garden as the other door to my presence chamber is thrown open and five men walk in.