I watch them as if I were gazing down from far away. I can see them walking together but only dimly hear what they say. I watch them as I know Queen Anne, wife to my Richard, watched me from her high window when we walked in the garden below and he put my hand in his arm and I leaned towards him, longing for his touch. I cannot blame Lady Katherine for ensnaring the King of England, for I did exactly the same. I cannot blame her for being young—she is eight years younger than me—and this summer I am as tired as if I were ninety years old. I cannot blame her for being beautiful—all courts are mad for beauty and she is a delight to watch. But most of all I cannot blame her for turning the king’s head away from me, his true wife, for I think she is doing the only thing she can do to save her husband.

I don’t think she is taken with him as he—vividly—is taken with her. I think she is holding him just where she wants him to be: at arm’s length but within arm’s reach, just at the right proximity so that she can influence him, divert him, soothe him, and soften him, in order to keep her husband alive.

She must have heard—who has not?—the rumors that there is to be a rescue of the boy. The Duchess Margaret sent her embassy to see her beloved protégé and nephew and everyone thinks that she had them whisper to him to wait, that help would come. Everyone knows she will try to save him. She has great influence in Europe, and the greatest kings still call themselves friends of the boy even though they are told he was an imposter. Support is gathering for the boy; if his wife can keep him alive for another season, someone will get him out.

Still the king does not act against the boy but keeps him imprisoned, with constant visitors. Lady Katherine is always at Henry’s side, always there with a quick smile and a soft question to remind him to be merciful to the boy that she married in error. Quick to show him that she can forgive and perhaps—who knows?—one day she may go on to love another? The boy does not have to die to set her free for she is already considering an annulment. Henry, at her side every day, often suggests that she should write to the Pope to ask to be freed from her marriage. It would be little more than a formality. She was tricked into marriage by a man bearing a false name. She was utterly dazzled by a silk shirt. It can be overturned by a single letter from Rome. She assures him that she is considering it, she takes it to God in her three daily prayers. Sometimes she slides a shy sideways smile at him and says that she is tempted by the thought of being a single woman again: free.