Both of my former husbands lived far from court, far from the gossip of London. When I got any London news, it was weeks late and through the rosy glow of distance, as told by the traveling pedlars, or in a rare hurried note from Nan. The rumors of royal wives who came and went over the years were like fairy stories told of imaginary beings: the pretty young whore, the fat German duchess, the angelic mother dead in childbirth. I don’t have Nan’s clear-eyed cynicism about the king and his court, I don’t know half what she knows. Nobody knows all the secrets that she has heard. I came to court only in the last months of my husband Latimer’s life to find a complete wall of silence around any mention of the last queen, and no happy recollections of any of them.

“Your motto had better be a promise of loyalty and humility,” Nan says. “He is raising you to a great position. You have to declare publicly that you’re grateful, that you will serve him.”

“I’m not naturally a humble woman,” I say with a little smile.

“You have to be grateful.”

“I want something about grace,” I agree. “Knowing that this is the will of God is the only thing that will carry me through.”

“No, you can’t say anything like that,” she cautions me. “It has to be God in your husband, God in the king.”

“I want God to use me. He has to help me. I want something like All that I Do Is for God.”

“All that I Do Is for Him?” she suggests. “Then it sounds as if you’re thinking only of the king.”

“But it’s a lie,” I say flatly. “I don’t want to use clever words to mean two things at once, like a courtier or a crooked priest. I want my motto to be something clear and truthful.”

“Oh, don’t be all blunt and northern!”

“Just honest, Nan. I just want to be true.”

“What about: To Be Useful in All that I Do? It doesn’t say useful to who—you know that it’s for God and for the reformed religion, but you don’t have to say that.”

“To Be Useful in All That I Do,” I repeat without much enthusiasm. “It’s not very inspiring.”

“The Most Happy was dead in three and a half years,” Nan says harshly. “No Other Will but His had her lover in the jakes. These are mottoes: they aren’t predictions.”

* * *