‘Oh?’ I protest.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Knowledge is always precious, Katherine. If you know something that no-one else knows then you have a secret. If you know something that everyone else knows then you are no better than them.’

‘Can’t I at least tell Anne Bassett?’

‘I’ll tell you when you can tell her,’ she says. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. Now go back to the queen. I am coming in a minute.’

I do as I am told, and as I go out I see she is writing a note. She will be writing to my uncle to tell him that I believe that the king has not bedded his wife. I hope she tells him that it was I who thought this first and not her. Then there may be another sovereign to go with the first. I begin to see what he means about great places bring great favours. I have only been in royal service for a matter of days and already I am two sovereigns wealthier. Give me a month and I shall make my fortune.

JANE BOLEYN, WHITEHALL PALACE,

JANUARY 1540

We have moved to Whitehall Palace, where the wedding is to be celebrated by a week-long jousting tournament, and then the last of the visitors will go back to Cleves and we will all settle into our new lives with a new Queen Anne. She has never before seen anything on the scale or of the style of this tournament, and she is rather endearing in her excitement.

‘Lady Jane, where I sit?’ she demands of me. ‘And how? How?’

I smile at her bright face. ‘You sit here,’ I say, showing her the queen’s box. ‘And the knights will come into the arena, and the heralds will announce them. Sometimes they will tell a story, sometimes recite a poem about their costume. Then they fight either on horseback, riding down the lists here; or hand-to-hand fighting with swords, on the ground.’ I think how to explain.

I never know how much she understands now, she is learning to speak so quickly. ‘It is the greatest tournament the king has planned in many years,’ I say. ‘It will last for a week. There will be days of celebrations with beautiful costumes and everyone in London will come to see the masques and the battles. The court will be at the forefront, of course, but behind them will be the gentry and the great citizens of London and then behind them the common people will come in their thousands. It is a great celebration for the whole country.’

‘I sit here?’ she says, gesturing at the throne.

I watch her take her seat. Of course, to me this box is filled with ghosts. The seat is hers now; but it was Queen Jane’s before her, and Queen Anne’s before that, and when I was a young woman, not even married, just a girl filled with hopes and ambitions and passionately in love, I served Queen Katherine, who sat in that very chair under her own canopy which the king had ordered should be sewn with little gold Ks and Hs for Katherine and Henry, and he himself had ridden out under the name Sir Loyal Heart.