“No,” Nan snarls. “He did not have it in mind; someone has put it into his mind. They have put it into his mind now. And your husbands were there when they did so.”

“It may just be the proper way to draw up the Act of Succession.” Catherine suggests.

“No, it isn’t.” Nan insists. “If she were to die and he remarried and had a son, then the boy would become heir after Edward by right of birth and sex. There’s no need for the king to provide for this. If she were to die, then a new marriage and a new heir would mean a new Act of Succession. It does not need to be provided for here and now. This is just to put the idea of another marriage into our minds.”

“Our minds?” I ask. “He wants me to consider that he might put me aside and marry again?”

“Or he wants the country to be prepared for it,” Catherine Brandon says very quietly.

“Or his advisors are thinking of a new queen. A new queen who favors the old ways,” Nan replies. “You have disappointed them.”

We are all silent for a moment.

“Did Charles say who added the clause?” Anne Seymour asks Catherine.

She gives a little shrug. “I think it was Gardiner. I don’t know for sure. Who else would want to prepare for a new queen, a seventh queen?”

“A seventh queen?” I repeat.

“The thing is,” Nan concludes, “as King of England and head of the church, he can do what he likes.”

“I know that,” I say coldly. “I know that he can do exactly as he likes.”

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

SUMMER 1544

Thomas Cranmer has worked constantly on his liturgy; he brings it to the king, prayer by prayer, and the three of us read it and reread it. Cranmer and I study the original Latin, and rephrase it, and read it again to the king, who listens, beating his hand on the chair as if he were listening to music. Sometimes he nods his head approvingly at the archbishop or at me and says: “Hear it! It’s like a miracle to hear the Word of God in our own language!” and sometimes he frowns and says: “That’s an awkward phrase, Kateryn. That sticks on the tongue like old bread. No one will ever say that smoothly. Rework it, what d’you think?” And I take the line and try it one way and then another to make it sing.

He says nothing about the Act of Succession and neither do I. It goes before the Houses of Parliament and is passed into law without my remarking to my husband that he is providing for my death, though I am young enough to be his daughter, that he is providing for a queen to follow me, though he has made no complaint of me. Gardiner is away from court, Cranmer is a frequent companion, and the king loves to work with us both.