He makes a little grimace, then he puts the groom aside with one gesture and he cups his hands to take my boot. Just the clasp of his warm hand on my foot reminds me how much I want him. “Ah God, Thomas.”

He throws me upwards and I swing my leg over the saddle and my maid comes forward and adjusts my skirts. We are silent while she does her work and then I am looking down on his dark curly head as he strokes my horse’s neck but he cannot put his hand on me. Not even on the toe of my boot.

“Will you spend Christmas with the king?”

He shakes his head. “He wants me to look at Dover Castle.”

“When will I see you again?” I can hear the desolation in my voice.

He shakes his head, he doesn’t know. “At least you’re safe,” he says, as if that is all that matters. “Another year, who knows what will happen?”

I can’t bring myself to imagine that anything good will happen. “Merry Christmas, Thomas,” I say quietly. “God bless you.”

He looks up, squinting a little against the brightness of the sky. This is the man I love and he cannot come closer. He steps back and puts his hand to my horse’s head, gently strokes his nose, fingers his mouth, his sensitive snuffing nostrils. “Go safely” he tells him. “You’re carrying a queen.” He lowers his voice. “And my only love.”

GREENWICH PALACE,

WINTER 1546

I think of Queen Katherine, who celebrated Christmas at Greenwich over a divided court while the king was in London courting Anne Boleyn, ordered to behave as if nothing was wrong. This time it is not lovemaking that keeps the king in the city but killing. They tell me that the court at Whitehall is closed to everyone but the Privy Council, and that the king and his advisors are going over and over the evidence that has been gathered against the Howards, father and son.

They tell me that the king has become devoted to scholarship. He studies Henry Howard’s careless letters as if they were a text, annotating every guilty admission, questioning every word of innocence. The king has become thorough, pedantic. Spite gives him energy and he follows the interrogations as if he is determined that the young man, the beautiful foolish young man, shall die because of his own light words, spoken without thought.