‘Your Grace!’

‘Hannah, he is leaving me,’ she said.

I shot a bemused look at Jane and she scowled at me, as if I were to blame.

‘Leaving you?’

‘He is going to the Low Countries. Hannah, he is leaving me . . . leaving me.’

I took her hands. ‘Your Grace . . .’

Her eyes were sightless, filled with tears, fixed on the empty hearth. ‘He is leaving me,’ she said.

I went over to Jane Dormer, stabbing her needle into a linen shirt in the window-seat. ‘How long has she been like this?’

‘Since he told her his news, this morning,’ she said coldly. ‘He sent her ladies away when she started screaming that her heart would break, then, when he could not stop her weeping, he left too. He has not come back, and they have not come back.’

‘Has she not eaten? Have you brought her nothing?’

She glared at me. ‘He has broken her heart, as you predicted,’ she said flatly. ‘Don’t you remember it? I do. When I brought her the portrait and I was so hopeful and she was so taken with him. You said he would break her heart and he has done so. Him with his baby that was there and then gone, him with his Spanish lords longing to go and fight the French, and forever complaining about England. Now he has told her he is going to war against the French, but not when he will come back; and she can say nothing but that he is leaving, leaving her. And she cries as if she would die of grief.’

‘Shouldn’t we get her to bed?’

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘He won’t come to her in bed for lust, if he won’t come here for pity, and his presence is the only thing that will help her.’

‘Mistress Jane, we cannot just sit here and see her cry and cry like this.’

‘What would you have us do?’ she asked. ‘Her happiness is given over to a man who does not care enough for her to stay when she has lost his baby and has lost the love of her people for him. A man who does not have enough common pity to give her a word of comfort. We cannot heal this hurt with a cup of warm ale and a brick beneath her feet.’

‘Well let’s get her that, at least,’ I said, falling on the suggestion.

‘You get it,’ she said. ‘I’m not leaving her alone. This is a woman who could die of loneliness.’

I went to the queen and knelt beside her where she keened, soundlessly, her forehead knocking against the hearthstone as she rocked forward and back. ‘Your Grace, I’m going down to the kitchen, can I bring you anything to eat or drink?’

She sat back on her heels but did not look at me. Her forehead was bloody where she had grazed it against the stone. Her gaze remained fixed on the empty hearth; but she put out her cold little hand and took mine. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘Not you as well. He’s leaving me, you know, Hannah. He just told me. He’s leaving me, and I don’t know how I can bear to live.’