“I take care of them,” she says. “I’ve done this for years, Kat, honestly. All you have to do is to ride beside the king if he wants you there, and look beautiful.”

“And if he doesn’t want me?”

“Then you ride with your companions and your master of horse.”

“I don’t even have a master of horse yet, I haven’t filled all my household posts.”

“We’ll appoint them as we travel. It’s not for lack of applicants! All the clerks will travel with us, and most of the court. The Privy Council meets wherever the king happens to be; it’s not like we are leaving court, we take everything with us.”

“Where are we going?”

“Oatlands first,” she says with satisfaction. “I think it is one of the best palaces, on the river, newly built, as beautiful as any of them. You’ll love it there, and the bedrooms aren’t haunted!”

OATLANDS PALACE, SURREY,

SUMMER 1543

Nan is completely right: the court breaks itself up and re-forms with practiced ease, and I love my rooms in Oatlands Palace. It was built on the river near Weybridge to be a honeymoon palace for Anne of Cleves, so Nan cannot truly claim that it is not haunted. Anne of Cleves’s sorrow and disappointment are in every courtyard. Her maid-in-waiting Katherine Howard was triumphantly married to the king, here in the chapel; I imagine he chased her, panting endearments, limping as fast as he could go through the beautiful gardens.

The palace was built with the stone of the abbey at Chertsey, every beautiful sandstone block pulled down from where it was dedicated to God to stand forever. The tears of the faithful must have fallen in the mortar; but nobody thinks of that now. It is a huge sunny palace, near to the river, designed like a castle with a tower at each corner and a huge courtyard inside. My rooms look towards the south and they are sunny and light. The king’s rooms adjoin them, and he warns me that he can walk in at any time to see what I am doing.

Over the next few days Nan and I draw up the list of posts in my household and start to fill them with the king’s choices, with our friends and family and then, when we have satisfied everyone who has a claim on me, with those whose careers we want to advance. I look at the list prepared by Nan and her friends who support the religious reforms. Giving them a place as my household officials at court and in my rooms as my companions strengthens their numbers at the very moment that they are losing the king’s support.