I cannot understand why such a man, the head of such a noble house, would sell his own daughter into marriage with the Seymours. Her first marriage was to the king’s bastard heir and there is no comparison. As always, Thomas Howard will be thinking one thing and doing another. So what is he thinking when he proposes this match? What will Thomas Seymour have to do when he is the duke’s son-in-law?

And how can the duke, knowing that his second son has been questioned by the Privy Council, dine on the king’s dishes like a man without fear? How can Thomas Howard frantically thinking where his son might be raise a glass with a steady hand to the king? I cannot make him out. I cannot calculate what long careful game he is playing in this court of old gamblers.

There is to be a masque after dinner with dancers. The king’s chair with the footstool is placed on the dais and I stand beside him. Courtiers come and go as the dancers make their grand entrance, and Will Somers skips out of the way as the musicians play and the dancing begins.

Anne Seymour comes quietly to stand behind me, her voice masked by the music. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. “They offered to release Tom Howard without a charge if he would admit that heresy is preached in your rooms. They threatened him with a trial for heresy if he did not assist them. They said that all they need to know from him are the names of those who preach in your rooms and what they say.”

It is like falling from a horse: everything suddenly goes very slowly and I can see how this started and how it will end between one beat of the music and another. It is as if the court freezes, the little golden clock in my room freezes, as Anne Seymour tells me that the Privy Council are pursuing me for heresy, hunting me down from word to word. Tom Howard is just bait to lead them to me. He is their first step. I am the goal.

“They asked him to name me?” I glance sideways at my husband, who is smiling at the dancers and clapping in time to the music, quite blind to my descent into terror. “Was the king there? At the Privy Council meeting? Was this in his hearing? Did the king ask them to name me as a heretic himself? Has he told them to find me guilty?”

“No, thank God. Not the king.”

“Who then?”

“It was Wriothesley.”

“The Lord Chancellor?”

She nods, completely aghast. “The highest law lord in the land has ordered the duke’s son to name you as a heretic.”

* * *