“He was no husband for me,” I confirm. I understand now how he wants this bedtime story to go. There are only half a dozen tales in the world, after all, and this one is to be about the girl who never found happiness until she met her prince. “He was no match for me at all, and he died, God bless him, when I was just twenty.”

As if the denigration of poor, long-dead Edward has lulled him, a long rumbling snore is my reply. I wait for a moment as he suddenly stops breathing. For one frightening moment there is no sound in the quiet room at all, then he catches his breath and loudly exhales. He does this over and over again until I learn not to flinch. I sit back in my chair by the fireside and watch the flames lick around the logs and flicker, making the shadows jump forward and then recede around me as the thick snorting goes on and on, like a boar in a sty.

I wonder, what is the time. Surely it must be dawn soon. I wonder when the servants will come. Surely they must make up the fires at dawn? I wish I knew the time. I would give a fortune for a clock to tell me how much longer I have to wait for this endless night to be over. It’s so odd that the nights with Thomas passed in a moment, as if the moon flung itself to set and the sun hurried into the sky. Not now. Perhaps never again. Now I have to wait for a lifetime till dawn, and hours and hours go by as I wait for the first light.

* * *

“How was it?” Nan whispers. Behind her, the servants take the golden washing bowl and ewer from my room, as the maids-in-waiting sprinkle my linen with rosewater and hold it to the fire to make sure that it is completely dry.

Nan has the purse of dried rue. With her back to the room she takes up the mulling poker from the red embers of the fire, seethes a mug of small ale, and stirs in the herb. Nobody notices as I drink it down. I turn my face away so no one can see my grimace.

I go with her to my prie-dieu and the two of us face the crucifix and kneel side by side so closely that no one can hear a word but will think that we are muttering our prayers in Latin.

“Is he potent?”

The question alone is a capital offense. Anne Boleyn’s brother was beheaded for asking this very thing.

“Just about,” I tell her tersely.

She puts a hand over mine. “He didn’t hurt you?”

I shake my head. “He can hardly move. I’m in no danger from him.”

“Was it...?” She breaks off. A well-loved wife herself, she cannot imagine my revulsion.