The mention of Prince Edward cheers Henry. “She did,” he says. “At least I have one son, and he is handsome, isn’t he?”

“The very image of his father,” Anne smiles. “See how he stands in the portrait. He is the very image of you!”

* * *

I lead my ladies back to my rooms. I am smiling and they are all smiling. We are all trying to show that we are untroubled, that we have seen nothing that disturbs our position, our sense of entitlement. I am the queen and these are my ladies. Nothing is wrong.

When we get to my rooms, I wait for them to settle to their sewing with a reader opening a book approved by the Bishop of London. Then I say that I have a little flux, something I ate, no doubt. I will go to my room alone. Nan comes with me because hell’s own horses would not keep Nan out of my hair right now, and she shuts the door behind us and looks at me.

“Bitch,” I say shortly.

“Me?”

“Her.”

“Anne Seymour?”

“No, Jane Seymour. The dead one.”

This is so unreasonable that not even Nan tries to correct me. “You’re upset.”

“I am publicly humiliated, I am supplanted before everyone by a ghost. My rival is not some pretty girl like Catherine Brandon or Mary Howard but a cadaver who was not even very lively when she breathed. And yet now she is the wife that he will not forget.”

“She is dead, poor lady. She cannot irritate him now. He can think of her at her best.”

“Her death is her best! She was never as charming as she is now!”

Nan makes a little gesture with her hand, as if to say stop. “She did the best that she could, and my God, Kat, you would not be so hard on her if you had seen her die in such a fever, crying out for God and for her husband. She may have been a ninny; but she died a woman in lonely terror.”

“What is that to me, who will now have to walk past her image every time I go to dinner? Who is not allowed to wear her pearls? But who has to raise her son? Bed her husband?”

“You are angry,” Nan says.

“Indeed,” I spit. “I see that your studies have not been wasted on you. I am angry. Excellent. Now what?”

“You’re going to have to get over it,” she says, as steady as our mother used to be when I raged against some nursery injustice. “Because you’re going to have to go to dinner with your head up, smiling, showing everyone that you are happy with the portrait, and happy with your marriage, and happy with your stepchildren and their three dead mothers, and happy with the king.”