Katherine bows her golden head in obedience but looks up at me, her blue eyes astounded, as I walk by. She falls into step behind me, her pale-faced husband tagging along with her. We go to the royal chambers, and I flush with embarrassment as we thrust ourselves rudely into Edward’s private rooms, into the royal chapel, into the royal bedchamber. I can’t see how I can be here; I certainly shall not sleep here—how could I sleep in the king’s bed! Everything that belonged to him has been hastily stripped out and the floor swept, and fresh rushes put down, as if he had been dead for months and not for four days. But even so, I feel as if he might walk in at any moment and I will be shamed to be caught posing in his chair.

But these are no longer Edward’s rooms, his private rooms; they have to be mine, and as we stand there, awkwardly displaced, the door bangs open and the grooms of the royal wardrobe heave in a cavalcade of great chests of gowns and jewels from the wardrobe and treasury. All the beautiful gowns worn by Kateryn Parr are here. I remember her in them. The capes that belonged to Anne of Cleves, the Seymour pearls, the French hoods of Anne Boleyn, the Spanish goldwork of the very first queen, dead before I was born. The only gowns that fit me are the pretty little ones that belonged to Katherine Howard, beheaded for treason when she was only a few years older than me, forced into marriage like me, named as a queen before she had learned to be a woman grown.

“Beautiful shoes,” Guildford says, showing me the embroidery and the diamonds on the toes.

“I won’t wear a dead girl’s shoes,” I say with a shudder.

“Then cut the diamonds off and give them to me.” Guildford laughs. He is plunging into the chests like a puppy dragging out toys. His mother smiles indulgently as he balances a jeweled hat on his fair head and swings a velvet cape around his shoulders.

Katherine looks at me, her blue eyes wide. “Are you all right?” she asks me.

“Leave them alone,” I say irritably to Guildford. “I’m not going to wear old furs and jewels.”

“Why not?” he demands. “They’re the royal goods. Why wouldn’t we look our best? Who has a better right than us?”

I turn to Katherine. “I think I’m all right,” I say unsteadily. “You?”

“They say I’m your heir,” she says feebly. “They say I am the next queen after you.”

I can’t help it, I let out a little scream of laughter. “You are to take the throne if I am dead?” I demand.

Her face is like a doll’s, frozen and pretty, blank without thought. “I hope not,” she says feebly. “For both of us.”