“What’s next?” I demand breathlessly, and Nan opens the next chest. This is filled with necklaces and belts. She draws out ropes of pearls and belts embroidered and encrusted with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and stones that I cannot even name, sparkling dark beauties set in thick blocks of silver or gold. She spreads chains of gold on the arms of chairs, necklaces of silver and diamonds in the laps of the maids so that they dazzle against rich fabric. There are opals with their soft milky light gleaming in green and peach, there is amber in great chunks of dark orange, and there are handfuls of uncut stones in purses looking like pebbles, hiding the flash of precious light within their rocky depths.

Nan opens another chest that has been carefully packed with rolls of the softest leather. Out come rings heavy with precious stones, and single stones on long chains. Without comment, she lays before me Katherine of Aragon’s famous necklace of plaited gold. Another purse is undone and there are Anne Boleyn’s rubies. The royal jewels of Spain come from one great box, the dowry of Anne of Cleves is spread on the floor at my feet. The treasure that the king showered on Katherine Howard comes in a chest all to itself, untouched since she was stripped of everything and went out to take the axe on her bare neck.

“Look at these earrings!” someone exclaims, but instead I turn away and go to the window to look down on the formal gardens and the glimpse of the silvery river through the trees. I am suddenly sickened. “Those are dead women’s goods,” I say unsteadily as Nan comes to my side. “They are the favorite treasures of dead queens. Those necklaces have been around the necks of the wife before me, some of them have been worn by every one of them who has gone before me. The pearls were warmed by their dead skins, the silver is tarnished by their old sweat.”

Nan is as pale as me. She wrapped Katherine Howard’s emeralds in their leather folders and put them in that very jewel box on the day of her arrest. She fastened Jane Seymour’s sapphires around her neck on her wedding day. She handed Katherine of Aragon her earrings and here they are now, on the table in my privy chamber for my use.

“You are the queen, you get the queen’s treasures,” she rules, but her voice trembles. “Of course. It’s how it has to be.”

There is a rap on the door and the guard swings it open. William Herbert, Nan’s husband, comes into the room and smiles to see us all surrounded by jewels like children amazed in the pastry kitchen, spoiled for choice. “His Majesty sent this,” he says. “It was overlooked. He says I am to put it on your beloved head.”