“We have to show ourselves to the people,” he tells me. “They have to see us, even when we are not here, even when we are away on progress or traveling or hunting. People have to be able to see the king and all the royal family. They have to recognize us, as they would their own brothers and sisters. D’you see? We have to be as distant as gods and as familiar as their own painted saints in the parish church.”

Mary stands looking proud and fragile. I think she looks both like a woman ready to fight for her rights, and a girl who fears that no one will love her. She is such a contradiction of fierceness and vulnerability that I don’t know if the painter can capture all the aspects of her, if he can understand that here is a daughter accustomed to being denied, and a young woman longing to be loved. Posed with her hands clasped before her in her gown of deep crimson, I see her pale stern face and think how dear she is to me, this staunch, intractable young woman.

Elizabeth will come next and she will raise her dark eyes and smile at the artist. She is pleasing while Mary is defiant, but under the veneer of Elizabeth’s coquetry is the same passionate need for love and the same anxiety to be acknowledged.

The painter has shown me the first drafts, and now there is to be an outside rim of the portrait showing two beautiful archways into the gardens beyond, and in the doorways he is going to paint the two Fools: Will Somers with his little monkey, and Mary’s female Fool. This is an improvement on the ruins of Boulogne, but I am not sure that I want a pair of Fools in a portrait of the royal family. The painter explains their purpose: they are there to signify that we have not grown overly great. We still have people who challenge us, who speak to our human failings, who laugh at us as sinners.

“And the king knows this?” I ask.

The painter nods.

“He agreed?”

“His Majesty liked the idea.”

I am glad. It shows that the king does not think of himself beyond challenge, as Thomas wrongly claimed. The king does indeed feel doubts, and he listens to the Fool Will, whose God-given gift is to voice these doubts.