She shook her head, as if she were trying to hear my rapid words but none of them made any sense to her. ‘Dearest God, this is the very worst thing that could ever have happened to me,’ she said quietly. ‘I saw my mother pushed from her throne and shamed by a younger woman who took the king from her and laughed as she did it. And now this woman’s daughter, the very same bastard daughter, does just the same thing to me.’

She broke off and looked at me. ‘No wonder I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I thought it was my own mad suspicion,’ she said. ‘It is the thing I have feared all my life. Ending up like my own mother, neglected, abandoned, with a Boleyn whore in triumph on the throne. When will this wickedness stop? When will the witchcraft of the Boleyns be defeated? They cut off her head and yet here is her daughter rising up like a serpent with the same poison in her mouth!’

I gave her hand a little tug. ‘Your Grace, don’t give way. Not here. Not here before all these people.’

I was thinking of her, and I was thinking of Elizabeth’s court who would laugh till they cried if they heard that the queen had broken down because she had heard at last what all of Europe had known for months—that her husband had betrayed her.

She shook from head to toe with the effort; but she drew herself up, she blinked back the tears. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I will not be shamed. I will say nothing more. I will think nothing more. Walk with me, Hannah.’

I glanced back at Danny. Will was seated on the ground with the boy astride his knees, showing him how he could wiggle his ears. Danny’s chuckle was delighted. I took the queen’s arm and matched my stride to her slow pace. The court fell in behind us, yawning.

The queen looked out over the swiftly moving water. There were few ships coming and going, trade was bad for England, at war with France and with the fields yielding less and less each year.

‘You know,’ the queen whispered to me, ‘you know, Hannah, I loved him from the moment I first saw his portrait. D’you remember?’

‘Yes,’ I said, also remembering my warning that he would break her heart.

‘I adored him when I met him, d’you remember our wedding day, when he looked so handsome and we were so happy?’

I nodded again.

‘I worshipped him when he took me to bed and lay with me. He gave me the only joy I had ever known in all my life. Nobody knows what he was to me, Hannah. Nobody will ever know how much I have loved him. And now you tell me that he is planning to marry my worst enemy when I am dead. He is looking forward to my death and his life after it.’