I have no breath. I throw one anguished look at my husband. He is beaming. I think this is the greatest joke, the greatest masque, that he has ever performed. He has broken my spirit and now he will break my neck and I cannot complain, I cannot protest my innocence. I cannot even beg him for a pardon because I cannot breathe.

Even my sight is dim, though I see Nan running towards us across the grass, her face screwed up in fear. Behind her little Jane Grey hesitates, steps forward, shrinks back, as Lord Wriothesley brandishes his warrant and says again: “You must come with me to the Tower, Your Majesty. No delay, please.” His face is bright. “Please don’t make me order them to take you by force.”

He turns to the king and he kneels to him. “I have come. I will do as you commanded,” Wriothesley says, his voice oozing contentment. He rises up again, and he is about to nod to the guards to surround me.

“Fool!” Henry bellows at him, full-voiced. “Fool! Knave! Arrant knave! Beast! Fool!”

Wriothesley falls back before the king’s red-faced sudden rage. “What?”

“How dare you?” Henry demands. “How dare you come into my own garden and insult the queen? My beloved wife! Are you mad?”

Wriothesley opens and closes his mouth like one of the fat fish in the carp ponds.

“How dare you come in here and distress my wife?”

“The warrant? Your Majesty! Your royal warrant?”

“How dare you show her such a thing? A woman sworn to my interests who has no mind but my mind, who has no thought but mine, whose body is at my command, whose immortal soul is in my keeping? My wife? My beloved wife?”

“But you said that she should be—”

“Are you saying that I would order the arrest of my own wife?”

“No!” Wriothesley says hastily. “No, of course not, Your Majesty, no.”

“Get out of my sight,” Henry shouts at him as if he is driven to madness by such disloyalty. “I can’t bear you! I never want to see you again.”

“But, Your Majesty?”

“Go!”

Wriothesley bows to the ground and stumbles backwards through the garden gate. The guards fumble their exit and rush after him, pushing their way out of the sunlit garden, desperate to get away from the furious king. Henry waits till they are all gone and the gate has clanged shut, the guard standing outside it with his back to us. Only when it is all still and quiet again does the king turn to me.