“I would die?” I ask. Even now, even after being queen for nearly three and a half years, walking through danger for all that time, I find it impossible to realize that anyone who knows me, who sees me at dinner every day, who has kissed my hand and promised loyalty, could coolly plot my death, and conspire to have me killed.

“It was Norfolk who named you as a disciple of Anne Askew,” she says. “That was to call you a heretic, that’s an offense that carries the penalty of death. It was he who worked with Gardiner to turn the king against you, calling you a serpent. This is not a man who sticks at trifles.”

“Trifles?”

“The death of a woman is a trifle to a man like the duke. You know it was he who passed the death sentence on both his nieces? He plotted that they be queen and when it went wrong, he sent them to the scaffold to save himself.”

Women’s lives do not matter to anyone at this court. Before every queen stands her pretty successor, behind her a ghost.

“So what is happening now?”

“The king is taking advice from us Seymours,” she says, unable to hide her rising pride. “Thomas and Edward are with the king now. I expect they will tell me what is happening when they come here before dinner, and then I will be able to tell you.”

“I am sure the king will tell me himself,” I say, to remind her that I am Queen of England and the king’s wife, newly restored to favor. Otherwise she will think of me as the Howards do, as the court does: a temporary occupant of the throne of queen, a woman who might be divorced or killed on a whim.

* * *

I dress with meticulous care, sending my gown back once and changing my sleeves. I think I will wear purple and then I see that though it is the color of emperors it drains the flush from my cheeks and tonight I want to look young and lovely. So I wear my favorite red with a golden underskirt and red sleeves with gold slashes. I pull the neck of the gown down, so that my creamy skin is defined by the square cut and my auburn hair flames against the scarlet of the hood. I wear rubies in my ears and gold chains at my waist and looped around my wrists. I paint my lips with rouge and I rouge my cheeks.

“You look beautiful,” Nan says, a little surprised at the trouble I have taken.

“I’m showing the Howard household that there is a queen already in place,” I say staunchly, and Nan laughs.

“I think we had a lucky escape,” she says. “Thank God that they could not agree and Thomas Seymour never brought Mary Howard to court.”

“Yes,” I say, disregarding the fact that he was ready to marry her. “He saved us.”