‘My lord?’ I whisper.

He throws himself off me and grunts a word that I don’t know. His head is buried in the richly embroidered pillow, he is still face down. I don’t know if he has finished or is merely beginning. He turns his head to me. His face is very red and sweating. ‘Anne . . .’ he starts.

At that fatal name he stops, freezes into silence. I realise that he has said her name, the first Anne that he loved, that he is thinking of her, the lover that drove him to madness and whom he killed in jealous resentment.

‘I, Anne of Cleves, am,’ I prompt him.

‘I know that,’ he says shortly. ‘Fool.’

With a great heave that pulls all the bedcovers off me, he turns around and lies with his back to me. The air released from the bed is stale with an awful smell. This is the smell of the wound on his leg, this is the smell of putrid flesh, this is the smell of him. It will scent my sheets for ever, till death us do part, I had better get used to it.

I lie very still. To put a hand on his shoulder would, I think, be wanton behaviour, and so I had better not, though I am sorry if he is weary and haunted by the other Anne tonight. I will have to learn not to mind about the smell and about the feeling of being pressed down. I shall have to do my duty.

I lie in the darkness and look up at the rich canopy of the bed above me. In the dimming light which gets darker as each square block candle, one by one, gutters and goes out, I can see the glint of gold thread and the rich colours of the silks. He is an old man, poor old man, forty-eight years old, and it has been a long and exhausting day for us both. I hear him sigh again and then the sigh turns into a deep, bubbling snore. When I am certain that he is asleep I put my hand lightly on his shoulder where the thick damp linen of his nightshirt covers the fat sweaty bulk of him. I am sorry that he should fail this night, and if he had stayed awake, and if we had spoken the same language, and were able to tell each other the truth, then I would have told him that even though there is no desire between us that I hope to be a good wife to him and a good queen for England. That I feel pity for him in his old age and weariness, and that no doubt when he is rested and less tired we will be able to make a child, the son that we both want so much. Poor sick old man, I would have given much to be able to tell him not to worry, that it will come out all right, that I do not want a young handsome prince, that I will be kind to him.