‘Hmm,’ he says irritably, and falls silent.

There is a long, awkward pause and there is nobody in the jousting arena to divert us, and everyone is waiting for me to say something pleasant to my husband, who sits in silence, scowling at the herbs on the floor.

‘Oh, get up,’ he says crossly to Lady Lisle. ‘Your old knees will lock up if you stay down for much longer.’

‘I have letter,’ I say quietly, trying to change the subject to something less controversial to him.

He turns and looks at me, he tries to smile, but I can see he is irritated by me, by my accent, by my halting speech.

‘You have letter,’ he repeats, in harsh mimicry.

‘From Princess Elizabeth,’ I say.

‘Lady,’ he replies. ‘Lady Elizabeth.’

I hesitate. ‘Lady Elizabeth,’ I say obediently. I take out my precious letter and show it to him. ‘May she come here? May she live with me?’

He twitches the letter from my hand, and I have to stop myself from snatching it back. I want to keep it. It is my first letter from my little stepdaughter. He screws up his eyes to stare at it then he snaps at his pageboy who hands him his spectacles. He puts them on to read but he shades his face from the crowd so that the common people shall not know that the King of England is losing the sight of his squinty eyes. He scans the letter quickly, then he hands it with the spectacles to his page.

‘Is my letter,’ I say quietly.

‘I shall reply for you.’

‘Can she come to me?’

‘No.’

‘Your Grace, please?’

‘No.’

I hesitate, but my stubborn nature, learned under the hard fist of my brother, a bad-tempered, spoiled child just like this king, urges me on.

‘So, why not?’ I demand. ‘She writes me, she asks me, I wish to see her. So why not?’

He rises to his feet and leans on the back of the chair to look down on me. ‘She had a mother so unlike you, in every way, that she ought not to ask for your company,’ he says flatly. ‘If she had known her mother she would never ask to see you. And so I shall tell her.’ Then he rises to his feet and stamps down the stairs, out of my box, and across the arena to his own.

JANE BOLEYN, WHITEHALL PALACE,

FEBRUARY 1540

I have been expecting this summons to confer with my lord the duke at some stage during the tournament but he did not send for me. Perhaps he too remembers the tournament at May Day and the fall of her handkerchief and the laughter of her friends. Perhaps even he cannot hear the trumpet sound without thinking of her white-faced and desperate on that hot May Day morning. He waits until the tournament is over and life in the palace of Whitehall has returned to normal and then he tells me to come to his rooms.