My uncle stands in the doorway, his face as dark as the devil. He nods to a man standing beside me, who bends down and grabs at my feet. I try to kick him but he takes me as if I were a little bucking foal and the three of them shuffle out of the room with me held between them. My ladies are in tears, the warden of my household is white with horror.

‘Don’t let them take me!’ I scream. Mutely, he shakes his head. I see he is clinging to the door to support himself. ‘Help me!’ I scream. ‘Send for—’ I break off then, for there is no-one to send for. My uncle, guardian and mentor is standing by, this is being done under his orders. My grandmother and sisters and stepmother are all under arrest, the rest of the family are frantically insisting that they hardly knew me. There is no-one who will defend me, and no-one has ever loved me but Francis Dereham and Tom Culpepper and they are dead.

‘I can’t go to the Tower!’ I am sobbing now, the breath shaken out of me by their big, bouncy strides with me slung between them like a sack. ‘Don’t take me to the Tower, I beg you. Take me to the king, let me plead with him. Please. If he is determined I’ll go to the Tower then, I’ll make a good death then, but I’m not ready yet. I’m only sixteen. I can’t die yet.’

They don’t say anything, they march up the gangplank to the barge and I give a little wriggle thinking I might throw myself into the water and get away, but they have huge hands and they hold me tightly. They sling me on to the dais at the back of the barge and they all but sit on me to keep me still. They have hold of my hands and my feet, and I am crying now and begging them to take me to the king, and they look away, out over the river, as if they are deaf.

My uncle and the councillors come on board, looking like men going to their own funeral. ‘My lord duke, hear me!’ I shout, and he shakes his head at me and goes to the front of the barge where he can’t hear or see me.

I am so afraid now that I can’t stop crying, the tears are pouring down my face and my nose is running and that brute has hold of my hands and I can’t even wipe my face. It is cold where my tears are wet on my cheeks and the disgusting taste of snot is on my lips, and they won’t even let me wipe my nose. ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Please.’ But nobody listens at all.

The barge goes quickly downriver, they have caught the tide just right, and the oarsmen feather their blades so they catch the safest part of the current at London Bridge. I glance up, I wish I hadn’t, at once I see the two new heads, two fresh severed heads, Tom Culpepper and Francis Dereham, like damp, soft gargoyles, their eyes wide open and their teeth bared, a seagull struggling to find its footing on Dereham’s dark hair. They have set their heads on the spikes beside the horrible rotting shapes of so many others, and the birds will peck out their eyes and tongues, and poke sharp beaks in their ears to winkle out their brains.