He takes my hand, he bows over it, he kisses my fingers. I feel the light touch of his mustache and the warmth of his breath on my hand and the slightest squeeze on my fingers as if to say “Beloved...” and then he straightens up and lets me go.

“Your Majesty,” he says. “I am so happy to see you looking so well.”

As he says the ordinary words his dark gaze is searching my face and I know that he will know that I have put on my best gown and reddened my lips. He sees the shadows under my eyes; he will know that I am grieving for Anne Askew. And he will also know, as a lover always knows, that something very grievous, very bad has happened to me.

He offers me his arm and we walk together, through bowing courtiers, to the window where he gestures with one hand as if to indicate the setting sun and the rise of one penetrating bright star on the horizon.

“Are you hurt?” he asks simply. “Are you ill?”

“I can’t tell you here and now,” I say honestly. “But I am not hurt or ill.”

“The king?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?” His face darkens.

I pinch the inside of his sleeve, the inner part of his elbow. “Not here. Not now,” I remind him. I smile up at him. “Is that the pole star? Is that the one that you steer by?”

“Are you in danger now?” he demands.

“Not now,” I say.

“Edward says that you were within a hairbreadth of arrest.”

I tip my head back and laugh. “Oh, yes! I saw the warrant.”

His gaze is admiring. “You talked yourself to safety?”

I think of my stretching my lips to the bloodstained riding whip. I think of the ivory satin codpiece thrust into my mouth, banging against my teeth. “No. It was worse than that.”

He makes a little exclamation. “God—”

“Hush!” I say rapidly. “We’re not safe. Everyone is watching. What’s going to happen to the Howards?”

“Whatever he wants.” He takes two impatient steps on the spot, as if he would fling himself out of the room but remembers that there is nowhere that he can go. “Whatever he wants, of course. I expect he will kill them. They were planning treason, without a doubt.”

“God help them,” I say, though they would have sent me to the scaffold. “God help them.”

The double doors are flung open and the king’s enormously bandaged foot comes in first, his great chair and his beaming smile next.

“God help us all,” Thomas says, and steps back like the courtier he is, so that my husband can be wheeled towards his possession, his chattel, his smiling wife.

* * *