Lady Browne is not laughing, her face is like thunder, so I hustle the girls into bed and tell them that they are all very foolish and that they would do better to copy their lady, the Lady Anne, and show proper dignity, than mimic Katherine Howard’s free and forward ways. They slip into their beds two by two like pretty angels and we blow out the candle and leave them in the darkness and lock the door. We have hardly turned away before we hear them whispering, but no power on earth can make girls behave well; and we do not even try.

‘Are you troubled, Lady Browne?’ I ask considerately.

She hesitates, she is longing to confide in someone, and I am here at her side, and known to be discreet.

‘This is a bad business,’ she says heavily. ‘Oh, it all passed off pleasantly enough in the end, with the dancing and the singing and Lady Anne recovered quickly enough as soon as you had explained to her; but this is a bad, bad business.’

‘The king?’ I suggest.

She nods and folds her lips over as if she would stop herself saying more.

‘I am weary,’ I say. ‘Shall we take a glass of warm ale together before we go to our beds? Sir Anthony is staying here tonight, is he not?’

‘God knows he won’t join me in my rooms for hours,’ she says unguardedly. ‘I doubt if any of the king’s circle will sleep tonight.’

‘Oh?’ I say. I lead the way into the presence chamber. The other ladies have gone to bed, the fire is burning low, but there is a jug of ale set at the fireside and half a dozen tankards. I pour us both a drink. ‘Trouble?’

She sits in her chair and leans forwards to whisper. ‘My lord husband tells me that the king swears that he will not marry her.’

‘No!’

‘He does. He does. He swears it. He says that he cannot like her.’

She takes a long draw on the ale and looks at me over the top of the mug.

‘Lady Browne, you must have this wrong . . .’

‘I have it from my husband this very night. The king seized him by the collar, almost by the throat, as soon as we retired, and said that the moment he saw Lady Anne, he had been struck with consternation, and that he saw nothing in her that he had been told.’

‘He said that?’

‘Those very words.’

‘But he seemed so happy as we left?’

‘He was as truly happy just as Katherine Howard was truly ignorant of his identity. He is as much a happy bridegroom as she is an innocent child. We are all actors here, but the king will not play the part of eager bridegroom.’

‘He has to, they are betrothed and the contract signed.’

‘He does not like her, he says. He cannot like her, he says, and he is blaming the men who made this marriage for him.’