I beam at him.

‘You are glad to go?’

‘Yes, my lord uncle. I am very grateful,’ I remember to add.

‘You have been placed in such a position of importance to be a credit to your family,’ he says solemnly. ‘Your grandmother here tells me you are a good girl and that you know how to behave. Make sure that you do, and don’t let us down.’

I nod. I dare not look at my grandmother, who knew all about Henry Manox, and who caught me once in the upper hall with Francis, with my hand down the front of his breeches and the mark of his bite on my neck, and called me a whore in the making and a stupid slut, and gave me a cuff that made my head ring, and warned me off him again at Christmas.

‘There will be young men who may pay attention to you,’ my uncle warns, as if I have never met a young man before. I dart a look at my grandmother but she is blandly smiling. ‘Remember that nothing is more important than your reputation. Your honour must be without stain. If I hear any unbecoming gossip about you—and I mean anything, and you can be sure that I hear everything—then I will remove you immediately from court and send you not even here, but back to your step-grandmother’s house in the country at Horsham. Where I will leave you forever. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, my lord uncle.’ It comes out in a terrified whisper. ‘I promise.’

‘I will see you at court almost daily,’ he says. I am almost beginning to wish that I was not going. ‘And from time to time I shall send for you to come to my rooms and tell me how you are getting on with the queen, and so on. You will be discreet and you will not gossip. You will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. You will take advice from your kinswoman Jane Boleyn, who is also in the queen’s rooms. You will endeavour to become close to the queen, you shall be her little friend. From the favour of princes comes wealth. Never forget it. This could be the making of you, Katherine.’

‘Yes, my lord uncle.’

‘And another thing,’ he says warningly.

‘Yes, uncle?’

‘Modesty, Katherine. It is a woman’s greatest asset.’

I sink into a curtsey, my head bowed, as modest as a nun. A laugh of derision from my grandmother tells me that she is not persuaded. But when I look up my uncle is smiling.

‘Convincing. You can go,’ he says.

I curtsey again and I flee from the room before he can say anything worse. I have been longing to go to court for the dancing and young men and he makes it sound like going into service.

‘What did he say? What did he say?’ They are all waiting in the great hall, desperate to know the news.

‘I am to go to court!’ I crow. ‘And I am to have new gowns and new hoods and he says I will be the prettiest girl in the queen’s chamber, and there will be dancing every night, and I daresay I will never see any of you ever again.’