He does not finish, but we all know that he might say—after all, the Duke of Northumberland would hardly do all this just to put Henry Grey’s daughter on the throne. Who cares for me, after all? How would my accession benefit the Dudleys? Guildford must get a title from this day’s work, at least; his family will want their fee. Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn, and the Dudleys are greedy bullocks.

“I shall make him a duke,” I offer. “That’s a royal title. He shall be Duke of Clarence.”

The last Duke of Clarence was drowned in a vat of malmsey in this very place, for his overweening ambition. I don’t care if they make the comparison.

* * *

I sleep with Katherine my sister in the royal bed, one of my ladies on a truckle bed on the floor beside us, the silky sheets warmed for me with a golden pan, the mattress stabbed in case of a hidden killer. Guildford does not come to me, and in the morning my stomach pain is worse and I wake to find that my course has come and I am bleeding.

Katherine leaps out of bed and strips back the covers. “How disgusting!” she says. “Why would you do this? Didn’t you know your course was coming?”

“No,” I say. “It doesn’t always come at the same time. How would I know it would come now?”

“You couldn’t have chosen a worse time or place.”

“I hardly chose it!” Of course, this has never happened before in the king’s rooms: there has never been a queen in these rooms, in this bed. All the queens live in the queen’s apartments. Katherine and I have to bundle the soiled sheets out to the laundry, and the groom of the linen looks disgusted. I am so terribly shamed. We have to send for clean petticoats and a bowl for me to wash, and they bring jugs of hot water and scented towels. I feel so disgraced that when I finally get to chapel, I put my face in my hands and pray to God that I bleed to death and am released from this terrible duty.

As soon as I get to the presence chamber and seat myself on the throne I receive a message from my mother-in-law. One of her ladies comes in and curtseys low—a royal curtsey—rises up, and tells me that Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland will not be attending court this morning, and that she and her son Lord Guildford are retiring to their house at Syon.

“Because I will not make him king?” I ask bluntly.

The woman blinks at my frankness. “My lord Guildford says that it is not enough to be a duke, and if he is not a king, then, clearly, he cannot be married to the queen.”