“Of course, Your Grace.” She is about to walk away from us and take the girls with her, leaving us on our own at the end of the great hall.

“Alone and undisturbed.” He stops her with a gesture of his hand. “In a private room.”

She hesitates, and I can almost see her calculating. Firstly, he is the king. Secondly, we are betrothed; and then finally her decision: he cannot, in any case, be refused. “You can be quite alone in the private chamber behind the great table,” she says. “I will see that you are not disturbed.”

He nods and rises to his feet. The musicians stop playing, the court sweeps down into a hundred bows and then rises up avidly to watch us as King Henry holds out his hand to me and, with my mother leading the way, escorts me from the raised dais and the great table where we took our dinner, through the arched doorway at the back of the great hall, into the private rooms. Everyone is rapt as we leave the court and the dancing. At the door to the chamber, my mother steps back and with a small shrug lets us go in, and it is as if we were playactors stepping off a stage into private life, into life without a playscript.

Once inside the room, he closes the door. Outside, I can hear the musicians start up again, the sound muffled through the thick wood. As if it were a matter of course, he turns the great key in the lock.

“What?” I say, startled from good manners. “What d’you think you are doing?”

He turns towards me and puts his hand firmly around my waist, locking me to his side with an irresistible grip. “We are going to become better acquainted,” he says.

I don’t shrink back from him like a fearful maid. I stand my ground. “I should like to go back to the hall.”

He sits on a chair as big as a throne, and pulls me down so I am perched uncomfortably on his knee, as if he were a drunk and I a doxy in a tavern, and he had just paid for me. “No. I told you. We are going to become better acquainted.”

I try to pull away from him, but he holds me firmly. If I struggle or fight with him I will be raising my hand against the King of England, and that is an act of treason. “Your Grace . . .” I say.

“It seems that we have to be married,” he says, a harder note coming into his voice. “I am honored by the interest that Parliament takes in the matter. Your family still has many friends, it seems. Even among those who profess to be my friends. I understand from them that you are insisting on the wedding. I’m flattered, thank you for the attention. As we both know, we have been betrothed for two long years. So now we are going to consummate our betrothal.”