I dip down into a deep curtsey, as we have practised over and over again in the maids’ chamber, leaning a little forwards so that my lord can see the tempting curve of my breasts pressed at the top of my gown. Slowly I look up at his face before I rise, so that he sees me almost on my knees before him, giving him a moment to think about the pleasure of what I could be doing down there, my little nose almost against his breeches. ‘My lord uncle,’ I breathe as I rise, as if I were whispering it in his ear in bed. ‘Give you a very good day, sir.’

‘Good God,’ he says bluntly, and my grandmother gives a little ‘Huh’ of amusement.

‘She is a . . . a credit to you, ma’am,’ he says as I rise without wobbling and stand before him. I clasp my hands behind my back to present my breasts to their full advantage, and I arch my back too so that he can admire the slimness of my waist. With my eyes modestly cast down I could be a schoolgirl except for the thrust of my body and the little half-hidden smile.

‘She is a Howard girl through and through,’ says my grandmother, who has no great opinion of Howard girls, known as we are for beauty and forwardness.

‘I was expecting a child,’ he says as if he is very pleased to find me grown.

‘A very knowing child.’ She gives me a hard look to remind me that nobody wants to know what I have learned while in her care. I widen my eyes innocently. I was seven years old when I first saw a maid bedding a pageboy, I was eleven when Henry Manox first got hold of me. How did she think I would turn out?

‘She will do very nicely,’ he says, after he has taken a moment to recover. ‘Katherine, can you dance and sing and play the lute and so on?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Read, write, in English and French, and Latin?’

I shoot an anguished look at my grandmother. I am tremendously stupid, and everyone knows it. I am so stupid that I don’t even know if I should lie about it or not.

‘Why would she need that?’ she asks. ‘The queen speaks nothing but Dutch, doesn’t she?’

He nods. ‘German. But the king likes an educated woman.’

The duchess smiles. ‘He did once,’ she says. ‘The Seymour girl was no great philosopher. I think he has lost his taste for argument from his wives. Do you like an educated woman?’

He gives a little snort at this. The whole world knows that he and his wife have been parted for years, they hate each other so much.

‘Anyway, what matters most is that she pleases the queen and pleases the court,’ my uncle rules. ‘Katherine, you are to go to court and be one of the new queen’s maids in waiting.’