This is a palace for plotting, all the corridors twist round and about each other, every courtyard has a little garden at the centre where one may meet by accident, every apartment has at least two entrances. Not even I know all the secret ways from the bedrooms to hidden water gates. Not even Anne did, not even my husband, George, who stole away so often.

The duke commands me to come to him privately after dinner and so I slip away from the dining hall and go the long way round in case anyone is watching me before entering his rooms without knocking, in silence.

He is seated at his fireside. I see by the servant clearing the plates that he has dined alone and eaten better than we did in the hall, I imagine. The kitchens are so far from the dining hall in this old fashioned palace that the food is always cold. Everyone who has private rooms has their food cooked for them in their own chambers. The duke has the best rooms here, as he does almost everywhere. Only Cromwell is better housed than the head of our house. The Howards have always been the first of families, even when their girl is not on the throne. There is always dirty work to be done and that is our speciality. The duke waves the server away and offers me a glass of wine.

‘You can sit,’ he says.

I know by this honour that the work he has for me will be confidential and perhaps dangerous. I sit and sip my wine.

‘And how are matters in the queen’s rooms?’ he asks agreeably.

‘Well enough,’ I reply. ‘She is learning more of our language every day, and she understands almost everything now, I think. Some of the others underestimate her understanding. They should be warned.’

‘I hear the warning,’ he nods. ‘And her temper?’

‘Pleasant,’ I say. ‘She shows no signs of missing her home, indeed she seems to have a great affection and interest in England. She is a good mistress to the younger maids, she watches them and considers them, and she has high standards; she keeps good command in her rooms. She is observant but not overly religious.’

‘She prays like a Protestant?’

‘No, she follows the king’s order of service,’ I say. ‘She is meticulous in it.’

He nods. ‘No desire to return to Cleves?’

‘None that she has ever mentioned.’

‘Odd.’

He waits. This is his way. He stays silent until one feels obliged to comment.

‘I think there is bad feeling between her and her brother,’ I volunteer at last. ‘And I think Queen Anne was beloved of her father who was sick from drink at the end of his life. It sounds as if the brother took his place and his authority.’

He nods. ‘So no chance of her being willing to step down from the throne and go home?’

I shake my head. ‘Never. She loves being queen and she has a fancy to be a mother to the royal children. She would have Prince Edward at her side if she could, and she was bitterly disappointed that she could not see the Prin—the Lady Elizabeth. She hopes to have children of her own and she wants to gather her stepchildren around her. She is planning her life here, her future. She will not go willingly, if that is in your mind.’