‘Or at any rate, not yet,’ Lady Browne amends coldly. ‘Until you see an advantage for yourself.’

I let it pass for just as I am about to answer the door opens and the guard announces:‘Mistress Catherine Carey, the queen’s maid in waiting.’

It is her. My niece. I have to face the child at last. I find a smile and I hold out my hands to her. ‘Little Catherine!’ I exclaim. ‘How you have grown!’

She takes my hands but she does not turn up her face to kiss my cheek. She looks at me quietly, as if she is taking the measure of me. The last time I saw her was when she stood behind her Aunt Anne the queen on the scaffold, and held her cloak as the queen put her head on the block. The last time she saw me was outside the courtroom when they called my name to go in to give evidence. I remember how she looked at me then: curiously. She looked at me so curiously, as if she had never seen such a woman before.

‘Are you cold? How was your journey? Will you have some wine?’ I am drawing her to the fire and she comes, but she is not eager. ‘This is Lady Browne,’ I say. Her curtsey is good, she is graceful. She has been well taught.

‘And how is your mother? And your father?’

‘They are well.’ Her voice is clear with just a hint of the country in her speech. ‘My mother sent you a letter.’

She brings it out of her pocket and hands it to me. I take it over to the light of the large square candle that we use in the royal household and break the seal.

Jane,

So starts Mary Boleyn, without a word of a title as if I did not hold the very name of her house in my name, as if I were not Lady Rochford while she lives at Rochford Hall. As if she did not have my inheritance and my house while I have hers, which is nothing.

Long ago I chose the love of my husband over the vanity and danger of the court, and we perhaps would all have been happier if you and my sister had done the same—God have mercy on her soul. I have no desire to return to court but I wish you and the new Queen Anne better fortune than before, and I hope that your ambitions bring you the happiness you seek, and not what some might think you deserve.

My uncle has commanded the attendance of my daughter Catherine at court and in obedience to him, she will arrive for the New Year. It is my instruction to her that she obeys only the king and her uncle, that she is guided only by my advice and her own good conscience. I have told her that, at the end, you were no friend to my sister nor my brother and advised her to treat you with the respect you deserve.

Mary Stafford