KATHERINE, NORFOLK HOUSE, LAMBETH,

JULY 1539

Now let me see, what do I have?

I have a small gold chain from my long-dead mother that I keep in my special jewellery box, sadly empty but for this one chain; but I am certain to get more. I have three gowns, one of them new. I have a piece of French lace sent by my father from Calais. I have half a dozen ribbons of my own. And, more than anything else, I have me. I have me, glorious me! I am fourteen today, imagine that! Fourteen! Fourteen, young, nobly born though, tragically, not rich; but in love, wonderfully in love. My lady grandmother the duchess will give me a gift for my birthday, I know she will. I am her favourite and she likes me to look well. Perhaps some silk for a gown, perhaps a coin to buy lace. My friends in the maids’ chamber will give me a feast tonight when we are supposed to be asleep; the young men will tap their secret signal on the door, and we will rush to let them in and I will cry, ‘oh, no!’ as if I wanted it to be just girls alone, as if I am not in love, madly in love, with Francis Dereham. As if I haven’t spent all day just longing for tonight, when I shall see him. In five hours from now I will see him. No! I have just looked at my grandmother’s precious French clock. Four hours and forty-eight minutes.

Forty-seven minutes.

Forty-six. I really am amazed at how devoted I am to him, that I should actually watch a clock tick down the time until we are together. This must be a most passionate love, a most devoted love, and I must be a girl of really unusual sensitivity to feel this deeply.

Forty-five; but it’s dreadfully boring, just waiting, now.

I haven’t told him how I feel, of course. I should die of embarrassment if I had to tell him myself. I think I may die anyway, die for love of him. I have told no-one but my dearest friend Agnes Restwold, and sworn her to secrecy on pain of death, on pain of a traitor’s death. She says she will be hanged and drawn and quartered before she tells anyone that I am in love. She says she will go to the block like my cousin Queen Anne before she betrays my secret. She says they will have to pull her apart on the rack before she tells. I have told Margaret Morton as well and she says that death itself would not make her tell, not if they were to fling her in the bear pit. She says they could burn her at the stake before she would tell. This is good because it means that one of them is certain to tell him before he comes to the chamber tonight, and so he will know that I like him.