“She didn’t foresee that,” Nan agrees. “Nor this.”

“No.” I shake my head with a smile. “Who’d have dreamed it?”

“Your rise to greatness.” Nan raises her glass in a toast. “But it comes with dangers.”

Nobody knows more about the dangers for a queen than Nan. She has served every one. She has given evidence on oath against three. Sometimes she has even told the truth.

“Not for me,” I say confidently. “I’m not like the others. I don’t have an enemy in the world. I’m famously generous, I’ve helped anyone who asked me. I have done nothing but good for the royal children. The king loves me, he made me Regent General and an editor for the English liturgy. He puts me at the heart of the court, of everything he cares about: his children, his country, and his church.”

“Stephen Gardiner is no friend of yours,” she warns. “And neither are any of his affinity. They would throw you down from the throne and out of the royal rooms at the first moment they could.”

“They wouldn’t. They might disagree with me; but this is a matter of debate, not enmity.”

“Kateryn, every queen has enemies. You have to face it.”

“The king himself supports the cause of reform!” I exclaim irritably. “He listens to Thomas Cranmer more than to Stephen Gardiner.”

“And they blame you for that! They planned for him to have a papist wife and they thought he had married one. They thought you were for the old church; they thought that you shared Latimer’s convictions. That’s why they welcomed you so warmly. They were never your friends! And now that they think you have turned against them, they won’t be your friends any longer.”

“Nan, this is madness. They may disagree with me but they wouldn’t try to drag me down in the eyes of the king. They won’t falsely accuse me of God-knows-what because we don’t agree about the serving of the Mass. We differ; but they are not my enemies. Stephen Gardiner is an ordained bishop, called by God, a holy man. He is not going to seek my destruction because I differ from him on a point of theology.”

“They went against Anne Boleyn because she was for the cause of reform.”

“Wasn’t that Cromwell?” I ask stubbornly.

“It doesn’t matter which advisor it is, what matters is if the king is listening to him.”

“The king loves me,” I say finally. “He loves only me. He would not listen to a word against me.”

“So you say.” Nan puts out her foot and pushes a log farther into the fire. A plume of sparks flies up, she looks awkward.

“What is it?”

“I have to tell you that they’re proposing another wife.”

I almost laugh. “This is ridiculous. Is this what you came to tell me? It’s nothing but gossip.”