If I survive this, if I am spared this, I shall find some way to report him for treason and I shall see him confined to one room, living in daily terror, waiting for the sound of them building the scaffold below the window, waiting for the keeper of the Tower to come and say that tomorrow is the day, and tomorrow he will die. If I survive this I shall make him pay for what he said to me, for what he called me, for what he did to them. He will suffer in this little room as I am suffering now.

When I think of this happening to me, I could go mad with terror. My only comfort, my only safety, is that if I go mad with terror, they will not be able to execute me. A madman cannot be beheaded. I could laugh if I were not afraid of the sound of my laughter echoing off the walls. A madman cannot be executed, so at the very end of this, if it goes as badly as it might, I shall escape the block where Katherine dies. I shall pretend to be mad and they will send me back to Blickling with a keeper, and slowly I shall recover my wits.

Some days I rave a little so that they can see I have the tendency. Some days I cry out that it is raining, and I let them find me sobbing because the slates outside my window are shining with the wet. Some nights I cry out that the moon is whispering happy dreams to me. I frighten myself, to tell the truth. For some days, when I am not acting mad, I think that I must be mad, I must have been mad, quite mad, perhaps since my childhood. Mad to marry George who never loved me, mad to love and hate him with such a passion, mad to find such intense pleasure in thinking of him with a lover, mad to bear witness against him, maddest of all to love him with such jealousy that I could send him to the gallows . . .

Stop, I must stop. I can’t think about this now. I cannot have this before me now. I am to act mad. I am not to drive myself mad. I am to pretend to madness, not feel it. I shall remember that everything I could do to save George, I did do. Anything anyone says against that is a lie. I was a good and faithful wife and I tried to save my husband and my sister-in-law. And I tried to save Katherine too. I cannot be blamed if the three of them were all as bad as each other. Indeed I should be pitied for having such ill luck in my life.

ANNE, RICHMOND PALACE,

FEBRUARY 1542

I am seated in a chair in my room, my hands clasped in my lap, three lords from the Privy Council before me, their faces grave. They have sent for Dr Harst at last, so this must be the moment of judgement after weeks of questioning my household, seeing my household accounts, and even talking to my stable boys about where I ride out, and who goes with me.