Down I go into my curtsey again and up I come tilted forwards so that the men can get a good sight of my low neckline and my breasts and, ‘Your Grace!’ I breathe, as if I can hardly speak for lust.

I can see they all enjoy this and Thomas Culpepper, who has the most dazzling blue eyes, gives me a naughty wink as one Howard kinsman to another.

‘Did you really not know me at Rochester, sweetheart?’ the king asks. And he comes across the room and puts his finger under my chin and turns my face up to him as if I were a child, which I don’t like much; but I make myself stand still and say: ‘Truly, sire, I did not. I would know you again, though.’

‘How would you know me again?’ he says indulgently, like a kind father at Christmas.

Well, this has me stuck because I don’t know. I don’t have anything to say, I was simply being pleasant. I have to say something; but nothing at all comes to mind. So I look up at him as if my head were full of confessions but I dare say nothing, and to my enormous pleasure I can feel a little heat in my cheeks and I know that I am blushing.

I am blushing for nothing but vanity, of course, and the pleasure of being singled out by the king himself in front of that slut Anne Bassett, but also for the discomfort of having nothing to say and not a thought in my head; but he sees the blush and mistakes it for modesty, and he at once tucks my hand in the crook of his arm and leads me away from the others. I keep my eyes down, I don’t even wink back at Master Culpepper.

‘Hush, child,’ he says very kindly. ‘Poor sweet child, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

‘Too kind,’ is all I manage to murmur. I can see Anne Bassett looking after us as if she would kill me. ‘I’m so shy.’

‘Sweetest child,’ he says more warmly.

‘It was when you asked me . . .’

‘When I asked you what?’

I take a little breath. If he were not king, I would know better how to play this. But he is the king, and this makes me uncertain. Besides he is a man old enough to be my grandfather, it seems quite indecent to flirt with him. Then I take a little glance upwards at him and I know I am right. He has got that look on his face. The look that so many men have when they look at me. As if they want to just swallow me up, just capture me, and have me in one gulp.

‘When you asked me whether I would know you again,’ I say in a thin, little-girl voice. ‘Because I would.’

‘How would you?’ He bends down to hear me, and I suddenly realise in a rush of excitement that it does not matter that he is king. He is sweet on me like my lady grandmother’s steward. It is exactly the same soft, doting look in his face. I swear I recognise it. I should do; I have seen it often enough. It is that stupid, wet look that old men have when they see me, rather nasty really. It is how old men look at women young enough to be their daughters and imagine themselves to be as young as their sons. It is how old men look when they lust for a woman who is young enough to be their daughter, and they know they should not.