I pause for a moment. ‘If he hates her and yet marries her he will find some way to be rid of her later.’ I am thinking aloud.

The duke says nothing but his eyelids hood his dark eyes. ‘Oh, who can foretell the future?’

‘She will be in the greatest of danger every day of her life,’ I predict. ‘If the king wants rid of her he will soon think that it is God’s will that he is rid of her.’

‘That is generally the way that God’s will seems to be manifest,’ the duke says with a wolfish grin.

‘Then he will find her guilty of some offence,’ I say. I will not say the word treason.

‘If you care for her at all, you would persuade her to go now,’ the duke says quietly.

I walk slowly back to the queen’s rooms. She will not be advised by me, in preference to her ambassadors; and I am not free to tell her what I truly think. But if I had been her true friend I would have told her that Henry is not a man to take as a husband if he hates you before the wedding day. His malice towards women who cross him is fatal. Who would know better than me?

ANNE, GREENWICH PALACE,

3 JANUARY 1540

The lady in waiting Jane Boleyn seems troubled and I tell her that she can sit beside me and I ask her, in English, if she is well.

She beckons my translator to come and sit with us, and she says that she is troubled by a matter of some delicacy.

I think it must be something about precedence at the wedding, they are so anxious about the order of the service and what jewels everyone may wear. I nod as if it is a serious matter and ask her if I may serve her.

‘On the contrary; I am anxious to be of service to you,’ she says, speaking quietly to Lotte. She translates for me, I nod. ‘I hear that your ambassadors have forgotten to bring the contract that releases you from a previous betrothal.’

‘What?’ I speak so sharply that she guesses the meaning of the German word, and nods, her face as grave as my own.

‘So they have not told you?’

I shake my head. ‘Nothing,’ I say in English. ‘They tell nothing.’

‘Then I am glad to speak with you before you are ill-advised,’ she says rapidly and I wait as the words are translated. She leans forwards and takes my hands. Her clasp is warm, her face intent. ‘When they ask you about your previous betrothal you must tell them that it was annulled, and that you have seen the document,’ she says earnestly. ‘If they ask why your brother failed to send it, you can say that you don’t know, that it is not your responsibility to bring the papers—as indeed it was not.’

I am breathless; something about her intensity makes me feel fearful. I cannot think why my brother should be so careless of my marriage, then I remember his constant resentment of me. He has betrayed his own plan from malice; at the last moment he could not bear to let me go smoothly from him.