She shakes her head. “It’s just the same as it always is,” she says. “He has to keep the wound open or the poison will mount to his head and kill him, but often when they pull the wound apart with wires, or grind gold chips into it, it seems worse than before. Now it was healing up and so they have torn it open and the poison is oozing out as it should, but this time it has gone very red inside. It’s swollen up very hot and puffy, and the ulcer seems to be deepening into his leg. Charles told me it is eating its way to the bone. It’s causing him terrible pain, and nothing eases it.”

I can’t help but be apprehensive. The king in pain is as dangerous as a wounded boar. His temper is as inflamed as his pulsing wound.

She gives me a gentle touch on my back as she steps aside for me to go first through the adjoining double doors. “Go on,” she says very quietly. “You can manage him when no one else can.”

Henry is in his privy chamber. He looks up as the private door opens and I come into the room. “Ah, thank God, and here is the queen,” he says. “The rest of you can hold your tongues and step back and let me speak privately with her.”

He is surrounded by men. I see Edward Seymour looking flushed and angry and Bishop Gardiner looking smug. I guess they have been bickering, jostling for a place before the king, even as the doctors put a drain into his leg to draw off poison from the wound, thrusting a sharp metal spoon deep into the raw flesh. No wonder my husband is red as a Lancaster rose, his eyes squeezed into tearstained slits in the ferocious grimace of his face. Charles Brandon, Catherine’s husband, keeps a cautious distance.

“I am sure that Her Majesty the Queen herself will agree...” Bishop Gardiner starts smoothly, and I see Wriothesley nod and come a little closer as if to reinforce a viewpoint.

“The queen will say nothing,” Henry spits out. “She will stand by me and hold my hand and hold her tongue as a good wife should. You will not suggest that she does other. And you will all leave.”

Promptly, Charles Brandon bows to the king, bows hand on heart to me, nods farewell to his wife and melts away from the king’s brooding presence.

“Of course,” Edward Seymour says quickly. He looks at me. “I am glad that Her Majesty is here to bring comfort and peace. His Majesty should not be troubled at such a time. Especially when matters are perfectly well as they are.”