In a dream I rise from my chair and walk with him from the room, we go down the great stairs to the front door where his escort is waiting, mounted with the royal standard before them. ‘I trust the king is well,’ I say.

‘His heart is broken,’ Sir Thomas says frankly. ‘It is a bad business, a bad business indeed. His leg is giving him much pain and Katherine Howard’s behaviour has caused him great unhappiness. The whole court has been in mourning this Christmastide, almost as if she were dead.’

‘Will she be released?’ I ask.

He shoots me a quick, guarded look. ‘What do you think?’

I shake my head, I am not such a fool to speak my thoughts, especially not when I have just been on trial myself.

If I ever did tell the truth I would say that I have thought for some months that the king is out of his wits and that no-one has the courage to challenge him. He could release her and take her back as his wife, he could call her his sister or he could behead her, as the mood takes him. He could summon me for marriage or he could behead me for treason. He is a monstrous madman and nobody but me seems to know it.

‘The king will be judge,’ he says, confirming my silent thoughts. ‘He alone is guided by God.’

JANE BOLEYN, THE TOWER OF LONDON,

FEBRUARY 1542

I laugh, I skip about, sometimes I look out of the window and talk to the seagulls. There is to be no trial, no questioning, no chance to clear my name, so there is no advantage to having my wits about me. They do not dare put that idiot Katherine before a court, or she has refused to go, I don’t know which and I don’t care. All I know is what they tell me. They speak very loudly to me, as if I were deaf or old, rather than mad. They say that parliament has passed an act of attainder against Katherine and against me for treason and conspiracy. We have been judged and found guilty without trial, without judge or jury or defence. This is Henry’s justice. I look blank and giggle, I sing a little song and ask when we shall go hunting. It can’t be long now. In a few days I expect them to fetch Katherine from Syon and then they will behead her.

They send the king’s own doctor, Dr Butt, to see me. He comes every day and sits in a chair in the centre of my room and watches me from under thick eyebrows as if I were one of the beasts. He is to judge if I am mad. This makes me laugh out loud without pretence. If this doctor knew when someone was mad he would have locked up the king six years ago, before he murdered my husband. I curtsey to the good doctor, and dance around him, and laugh at his questioning when he asks me for my name and for my family. I am absolutely convincing, I can see it in his pitying gaze. Undoubtedly he will report to the king that I am out of my wits and they will have to release me.