‘Time to go,’ I say again. I kiss it, since he is so urgent that I should, and I laugh at his sad face.

The guards stand either side of me and we go quickly down the stairs. But when I expect them to turn away to the back of the tower they guide me to the front entrance, to the green. I check at once, I don’t want to see Katherine Howard’s body being wrapped up like old laundry, then I remember I have to appear mad, right up to the last moment when they put me on the boat, I have to appear so witless that I cannot be beheaded.

‘Quick, quick!’ I say. ‘Trot, trot!’

The guards in reply take my arms and the door is swung open. The court is still assembled, almost as if they are waiting for another show on the bloodstained stage. I don’t like to be taken through them, past my friends who were honoured to know me. In the front row I see my kinsman, the Earl of Surrey, looking a little queasy at the sawdust drenched in his cousin’s blood, but laughing it all off. I laugh too and look from one guard to the other. ‘Trot! Trot!’ I say.

They grimace as if this is disagreeable and they tighten their grip and we walk towards the scaffold. I hesitate. ‘Not me,’ I say.

‘Come along now, Lady Rochford,’ the man on my right says. ‘Come up the steps.’

‘No!’ I protest, I dig my heels in, but they are too strong for me. They move me on.

‘Come on now, there’s a good girl.’

‘You can’t execute me,’ I say. ‘I am a madwoman. You can’t execute a madwoman.’

‘We can,’ the man says.

I twist in their grip, when they march me to the steps I get my feet against the first tread and push off from it, and they have to wrestle to get me up one step. ‘You can’t,’ I say. ‘I am mad. The doctors say I am mad. The king sent his own doctors, his own doctors every day to see that I am mad.’

‘Had the law changed, didn’t he?’ one of the guards puffs. Another fellow joins them and is pushing me from behind. His hard hands in my back propel me up the steps to the stage. They are lifting the wrapped body of Katherine off at the front, and her head is in the basket, her beautiful golden-brown hair spilling over the side.

‘Not me!’ I insist. ‘I am mad.’

‘He changed the law,’ the guard shouts at me over the laughter of the crowd, which has cheered up at this battle to get me up the steps. ‘Changed the law so that anyone convicted of treason could be beheaded, whether mad or not.’

‘The doctor, the king’s own doctor, says I’m mad.’

‘Makes no difference, you’re still going to die.’

They hold me at the front of the stage. I look out at the laughing, avid faces. Nobody has ever loved me in this court, nobody will shed a tear for me. Nobody will protest against this new injustice.