I get to my feet. “I’ll come,” I say. I see Elizabeth’s bright face bob up. She is such a vain child, she longs to see what the painter will have made of her. She sat for him in her best gown, in the hope that in the final design she will be placed center stage, close to her father’s hand, an acknowledged Tudor princess. Princess Mary and I exchange a wry look over Elizabeth’s head. We may not be excited like a girl at the thought of this portrait, but we are both glad to be publicly acclaimed. This picture will hang in Whitehall Palace for years, perhaps for centuries. People will copy it and have the copies in pride of place in their own homes. It will show the royal children with their father, and me: seated at his side. It will mark my achievement—a great achievement—of bringing the royal children to their father. I may not give him a child as Jane Seymour did, I will not be his wife for twenty-three years like Katherine of Aragon, but I have done something that no wife has managed to do before—I have put the children at the heart of the royal family. The two girls and the precious heir are in the same portrait as their father. It is a picture of a royal family and I am there as their acknowledged mother. I am queen, I am regent, I am their mother, and the portrait will show my children around me, my husband beside me; and those who doubt my influence and think that they can conspire against me can look at this portrait and see the woman at the heart of the royal family.

“We’ll come at once,” I say.

I am eager to see how I look. After trying many colors I chose to wear my red undergown, with an extravagant overgown of cloth of gold trimmed with ermine. The painter himself selected it from the royal wardrobe. He said that he wanted the colors of the picture to be all red and gold, to show our wealth, to show our unity, to show our grandeur in royal colors. I did not say that red is my favorite, but of course I know that it sets off my white skin and my auburn hair. He asked me to change my headdress, from my favorite French hood, a semicircular frame that I wear set back on my hair, to the more old-fashioned gable type. Nan brought his choice from the royal treasury and set it on my head. “Jane Seymour’s,” she said briefly. “Gold leaf.”

“I would never wear this!” I exclaim, but he pushed it gently back so that my hair showed a little, so that it framed my face.