“Lady Katherine . . .” I beckon her out of their hearing and she drops a quick kiss on my son’s copper head and comes to me.

“The king believes that your husband was in his bed in the wardrobe rooms,” I say levelly. There is no intonation in my voice at all, I am as bland as milk.

She nods, expressionless.

“The king fears that he must have died in the blaze,” I say.

“It is the wardrobe rooms that are on fire?”

“It’s where the fire started, and it has taken hold.”

Both of us absorb the curious fact that the fire should start not in the kitchen, nor the bakery, nor even in the hall where there are great fires always burning, but in the wardrobe rooms where the strictest watch is kept, where the only naked flames are the candles, which are lit when the seamstresses are at work and doused when they leave for the evening.

“I suppose,” I observe, “that since the king thinks that your husband is dead, he will not look for him.”

She is very still as she takes in this thought, then she looks up at me. “Your Grace: the king holds our son, my little boy. I could not leave without him. And my husband will not leave without us. I see that he has a chance to escape, but I don’t even have to ask him what he will do; he would never leave without us. He would have to be carried out half-dead to go without us.”

“It may be that this chance has come from God,” I point out. “A fire, confusion, and the expectation of his death.”

She meets my eyes. “He loves his son, and he loves me,” she says. “He is as honorable . . . as honorable as any prince. And he has come home now. He will not run away again.”

Gently, I touch her hand. “Then he had better reappear soon, with some explanation,” I advise her shortly, and I walk away from her to stand with my children, and promise them that their ponies will have been taken from their stables and are safely turned out in the damp winter fields.

In the morning the flames are doused down but the whole palace, even the gardens, smells terribly of wet timbers and dank smoke. The wardrobe rooms are the great storehouse of the palace and priceless treasures have been lost to the flames, not just the costly gowns and ceremonial costumes, but the jewels and the crowns, even the gold and silver plate for the table, some of the best pieces of furniture and stores of linen. Thousands of pounds of goods have been destroyed, and Henry pays men to sift through the embers for jewels and melted metals. They bring up all sorts of rescued objects, even the lead from the windows has melted and twisted out of shape. It is terrible what has been lost; it is amazing what has survived.