‘But what’s wrong with him?’ she whispers to me.

  ‘His doctor says he’s very well.’

  PEOPLE START TO whisper that the huge trays of food are a deception, and he is not in there at all. I wonder if there is another greater deception: if he has died in there and the Seymours are concealing his death until they have made alliances strong enough to announce a Seymour regency to govern for their little prince. But I cannot see the Seymours; they are locked up like an enclosed silent order with the king. I cannot write to warn my uncle. I have to practise patience and hold Kitty in readiness for whatever is to come.

  Dr Butts calls in other physicians from London, as if he has lost his famous certainty, and they come upriver in the royal barge, the ice cracking under the bow wave as the icy water washes down. I remember Dr Butts telling George to take off the king’s helmet after the jousting accident – and all of us wondering if the head would come off, too. He was alone then; he did not need another opinion to bring the king to life. Can it be that the king is closer to death now than when his great horse rolled on him? Is Dr Butts more fearful now – is the king worse than when he lay like a dead man?

  I walk, wrapped against the cold in my dark cape, hidden by the dusk, along the riverbank path, past the pier as the doctors board the barge back to London. One of them says quietly that cupping will never bring down a tertian fever as hot as this one. He lowers his voice: ‘His heart can’t stand it …’

  NOW EVERYONE KNOWS that the king has a tertian fever and that recurs and recurs till it kills the patient. Someone says that he was delirious with fever; they had to hold him to the bed to stop him throwing himself from the window, and now he has collapsed into a tranced silence, his glassy eyes on the ceiling, his mouth gaping in a silent scream of pain, while the poison in his leg runs through his body; and when it reaches his brain, he will die. His favourites never leave his rooms, as if they are to be buried with him, like pagan companions in a king’s grave.

  Once again, the court catches the king’s terror of death. If he dies tonight, he has only a frail little boy to succeed him and a country divided against him. I should alert my uncle that his niece Kitty might be widowed; but he is travelling in the wild lands between England and Scotland. He has no messenger network as my spymaster did; we have no code, and in any case I cannot write that the king is dying – that is treason. I am the only person who can position Kitty for her future widowed state. I catch Thomas Seymour, as he runs up the stone stairs from the stables.

  ‘Lady Rochford.’ He bows.

  ‘Sir Thomas,’ I reply. ‘Can you tell me: how is the king today?’

  ‘Better,’ he says, immediately deceitful. ‘Better every day, I think.’

  ‘I thank God for it,’ I say, as dishonest as he. ‘The queen will be happy to hear. And our prince, the queen’s stepson, is well also at Hertford Castle?’

  A sideways glance from his dark eyes tells me he has noted that I claim the little boy as Kitty’s stepson. ‘Yes, praise God.’

  ‘The king always used to read the nursery reports to Queen Katheryn,’ I remark. ‘She has missed hearing of him. She’s a very devoted stepmother.’

  His smile tells me that he knows this is a lie. ‘She is a young woman herself,’ he says, as if to excuse her indifference.

  ‘Old enough for motherhood,’ I contradict him. ‘The king thinks her old enough to be a mother and a stepmother. Old enough to supervise her stepchildren, our little kinswoman Lady Elizabeth and her stepson Prince Edward. When the weather is warmer, she will visit them both.’

  He bows. ‘I am sure they will be honoured,’ he says. ‘I will see that the queen gets reports from the Hertford nursery.’

  ‘And she will send her advice through you, his uncles,’ I say. ‘Loving, motherly advice. You and she are the prince’s only parents while the king is unwell.’ I want him to understand that I’m not challenging their place as lords protector, but I expect a share of the power.

  ‘We’ll be glad to have her motherly advice,’ he says. A direct glance from his dark eyes tells me that we understand each other, that when the king dies, there will be a Seymour regency and Kitty must be named as regent queen. He knows well enough that this is my idea and my plan, that he will have to deal with me and the Howards behind me. Kitty is our figurehead: I am the power.

  He kisses my hand. ‘I’m so glad we have had this talk.’

  ‘I too.’ I smile as he bows and goes up the stairs to the king’s rooms, where the king is dying in secret as the fever heats his hurrying heart towards silence.

  IN THE QUEEN’S rooms, we see no one. There is no singing or dancing or even playing cards. The young noblemen who ran in and out are now confined to the king’s rooms, shuttered in silence. Only Katheryn’s kinsmen visit her, and they are not of the king’s inner circle and know nothing. Charles Howard comes to visit his sister and sips a glass of wine.

  ‘Did you tell the king you were coming to my rooms?’ Katheryn asks.

  Her brother shakes his head.

  ‘He didn’t ask you to come to see me?’

  ‘Alas,’ he says insincerely.

  ‘He sent no message?’

  Charles looks across at me for help. ‘No, he did not,’ he says. ‘He didn’t, actually. No.’

  Katheryn slips off her throne, so her brother has to rise to his feet. She puts her little hand on the richly embroidered sleeve of his jacket, and he awkwardly passes his glass to me so he can hold her hands.

  She draws him away from the listening ladies. Only I can hear, as I follow behind them, her urgent whisper: ‘Brother Charles, dear brother Charles, is the king my lord displeased with me?’

  ‘Not at all not at all!’ he shoots a glance at me imploring for help. ‘His Majesty the king is in good health and thinks fondly of you, as ever. He is very well … he will do himself the pleasure, no doubt …’ He detaches himself from Kitty’s grasping hands, makes a low bow, throws a yearning glance to Margaret Douglas, and gets himself out of the room.

  I catch him in the gallery outside. ‘You do right not to alarm the queen, but you can tell me. Is the king thinking kindly of the queen? It’s better if I know. It’s better for all of us if I know how to advise the queen.’

  My heart sinks as I recognise in him the alarm of a courtier who has lost control of his master. ‘Nobody knows what he’s thinking,’ he whispers urgently. ‘Because he’s struck dumb: his face black as a chimney sweep, his breath coming in gasps. He sees no one but his doctor and his cook and two favourites. He does nothing but sleep and eat, except for when he raves like a madman for pain. God knows where this will end. I cannot say – you understand me – I cannot say.’

  ‘But he has nothing against the queen?’ I ask urgently, one hand on his arm. I dare not say: He has not sent for a lawyer? He has not changed his will? When he dies, she will be recognised as dowager queen? He has named no heir other than the little Seymour boy? He has not approved a regency council that excludes her? Anyone but a fool would know what I mean.

  ‘He says nothing about her at all,’ he explodes. ‘I think he’s forgotten all about her! When he’s raving, he swears that he has no friend and no true advisor. His people are all rebels. He says he has no wife. He’s dying as lonely and pained as she did. Nobody can take the place of Lord Cromwell.’

  ‘He’s missing Lord Cromwell?’ I am aghast.

  ‘He says he’ll never forgive those who dragged him down – us Howards!’

  ‘But Lord Cromwell made the Cleves wedding!’

  ‘Now he says there was nothing wrong with the Cleves wedding! And nothing wrong with Anne of Cleves!’

  ‘Does he think to recall her?’ I am stunned. ‘What’s he thinking? Is he going back to the duchess?’ This is like a nightmare. If he regrets the divorce of Anne of Cleves and the death of my friend Thomas Cromwell, and all the others: my husband, my sister-in-law, Henry Pole, Henry Courtenay. Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher … then my whole life has been grief without reason, and I have lost my husband and my sister-in-law and the only friend I ever had to a madman.

  My blank horror exasperates Charles. ‘I told you! And I d-damned well should not tell you! He thinks he is d-d-dying … and he speaks only of …’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The dowager princess,’ he blurts out, and for a moment, I am so distressed that I do not know who he means. ‘Who?’ I demand. ‘Who?’

  ‘Katherine of Aragon,’ he says. ‘He is dreaming that he is a young man again and married to Queen Katherine. When he wakes, he cries for her and calls for Cardinal Wolsey and for his dear friend Thomas More and faithful Cromwell, and when we can’t bring them, he says that nobody cares for him, for his true self, and we are all … all …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trai-trai—’ He can’t get the word: traitors out of his tight throat.

  I grab his cold hands, and I force him to turn to look at me. ‘You speak of her,’ I command him. I hiss the words into his ear as if I would spit them into his stupid, handsome head. ‘Put the queen, our queen, in his mind again. Say she is distraught with grief and worry for him.’

  ‘How can I?’ he says feebly. ‘He’s surrounded by Seymours, speaking of Jane and her son, their heir.’

  ‘She has to be dowager queen!’ My gripping hands are as cold as his. ‘She has to be on the council of regency. You have to make sure he names her to the regency.’

  ‘I tell you, he’s going to die unshriven, without a will. He’s going to die a madman.’

  Hampton Court, March

  1541

  SHROVE TUESDAY IS the first of March this year, but I think Lent came earlier, heralded with drumbeats as the king’s barge docked at the palace pier and brought us a Fisher king – a man who only wants a kingdom of silence and sorrow. There will be no masques or jousts or feasts. The master of revels orders no musicians; no scenery painted for the jousting arena and no costumes sewn for masques. We hardly know that it is Fat Tuesday at all – there is no special food at dinner; there is no lord of misrule. Will Somer the fool stays in the king’s rooms and can raise no laughter: the muttered Lent prayers are like a spell that has spread a brooding silence, down quiet galleries, through echoing halls.

  ‘This isn’t like being queen at all,’ Kitty whispers to me. ‘It’s worse than Lambeth. It’s worse than Horsham! I might as well have stayed at home, a nobody and nothing; but free to do what I want.’

  ‘Wait,’ I tell her. ‘These might be the most important days of your life.’

  We observe Lent strictly in the queen’s rooms, wearing modest clothes in dark colours, fasting at meatless dinners, and attending mass in the chapel, swept bare of any colour. We watch, in silent envy, as great mountains of food are marched into the king’s rooms: meats and creams, butters and cheeses, puddings and rich morsels, flagons of deep red wines.

  Kitty, on Lenten fare of fish and white meat, starts to lose weight; her round girlish face gets thinner, and never flushes with pleasure.

  ‘You have to eat!’ I urge her. ‘You can order some game meat.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t feel like it,’ she says. ‘I don’t feel like anything. When’s the king going to come out, d’you think? Is he ever going to come out? Are the young men never going to be free again?’

  The whole court starts to predict that the king will stay enclosed like the monster the pilgrims named him – the mouldwarp who lives feasting in dark tunnels underground. Will he hide in his rooms until Lent has ended and only come out at Easter? Can it be possible that he will sleep until the weather warms and not come out until Whitsun?

  WITHOUT WARNING, THE guards are gone from the door to the king’s rooms, the great doors to his presence chamber are swung open, and when we go to early mass in the chapel, there is the king, in his usual seat, with Sir Anthony Browne in Cromwell’s place, bending over him and sliding letters before him, as if nothing has changed and he has never been away.

  A giddy sense of relief sweeps through the court. People fall to their knees on the chapel floor for the first sincere prayer of thanksgiving in their lives. We courtiers, safe behind high walls, we landowners at war with our tenants – how would we survive if the king died? Who would keep us so richly, riding so high?

  When the priest prays for the health of the king, everyone bows their heads; everyone is fervent in their prayers for his wellbeing, for his health and happiness, and for the life and fertility of his queen.

  Katheryn glances across at him all through the service, her face pale behind the lace of her veil, and I know that she is afraid of this man who has come back from the dead, returned to us from his own earthly purgatory. It has been horrible to see the mountainous dinners going in and the dirty plates with bare bones and broken pastries coming out hours later. She feels like a bride in a fairy story, married to a monster.

  The king does not take his eyes from the papers that are carefully placed, one after another, before him. But he does not sign them; he stamps each document, as if banging down an angry fist, and each paper is taken away for his signature to be inked-in later. Has he grown too lazy to even scrawl his name? Has he given away the sign that makes a whim into law? Who holds the stamp of his signature? Who is ruling the country if the king, who never read the decrees that he issued, does not even sign them now?

  ‘Should I curtsey to him?’ Kitty whispers to me as the mass ends with the bidding prayer.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Curtsey and look up smiling with joy, and if he wants to speak to you, he will beckon you forward.’

  She looks aghast.

  ‘Smile,’ I tell her. ‘Look as if you are happy that he is well. Say something like God is merciful to us all, that you are well … something like that.’

  She looks full of dread, but she rises to her feet, curtseys to the altar, and then turns and curtseys to the king. He waves a pudgy hand that she must come forward. She goes to him and, obedient to another wave, bends over him and kisses his cheek.

  Without warning, he grabs the back of her head and pulls her mouth to his, kisses her wetly and lets her go.

  Kitty straightens up as the court applauds. I can see she is shaking, but she manages a trembly smile. ‘God is merciful …’ she parrots. ‘Merciful.’

  ‘I am under His special protection,’ the king tells her. ‘God has restored my health and vigour.’

  LONDON IS FREE from plague, and the king is well enough to be seen in public; he wants to enforce his recovery on us all. He demands a public ceremony to show he is as healthy and as fit as a man half his age, with a beautiful young queen at his side. At least Katheryn gets her ceremonial entry to her capital city. There will be no coronation until she is pregnant – never again is he going to be stuck with a childless queen – but he wants to show Kitty off to an admiring crowd and celebrate himself as the potent husband of a beautiful bride. He comes to her bed even though it is Lent, as if he does not care if it is a godly act or not, and he limps past me with a sly smile.

  Katheryn blooms again at the attention and the promise of a public appearance. Over and over again, she asks me and her vice chamberlain, her brother-in-law Sir Edward, to describe the formalities and where she should sit and when she should move and the queenly gestures of acknowledgement for applause. Sir Edward, who has no patience with female vanity, begrudgingly tells her that she will be steered and guided throughout the day, and just to watch him and he will tell her what she would do.

  Of course, this is no help to Kitty, who must be practice-perfect in every dance. So I put a chair in her privy chamber to serve as the throne of the barge, and the maids-of-honour walk past shouting: ‘I am the guild of vintners!’ and ‘I am the guild of fishmongers!’ and ‘I am the lord mayor!’ – and the ladies shout ‘bang!’ for the boom of the Tower guns, and some of them sit in the window seat and cheer to represent the people of the City on the riverbank to see their new queen.

  The maids-of-honour turn this into a romp and throw strewing herbs at each other for river water and pretend to fall in the pretend river, overawed by Katheryn’s beauty, and roll about miming drowning. In the old days, Kitty would have rolled on the floor with them; but today, she is very serious and tells them to do it properly or not at all and asks me the exact level of her seated bows to the lord mayor or to the guild of fishmongers. She orders all the gowns of cloth of silver brought from the royal wardrobe, and we send to the Tower for extra jewels. She is determined to dazzle the City that knows her only as an unimportant daughter of a disgraced nobleman, the lowly maid-of-honour to the former queen of royal blood.

  ‘They loved Anne of Cleves, didn’t they?’ she demands nervously in the privacy of her bedchamber, as I hold one gown after another against her, while Catherine Tilney holds the long looking-glass and rolls her eyes.

  ‘They didn’t know her,’ I reassure her. ‘They’ll love you. You just have to smile and wave.’

  ‘And get into the barge without tripping,’ she reminds me. ‘And acknowledge the lord mayor and everyone at the Tower, and then do the river parade just right.’

  ‘They’ll love you,’ I tell her again. ‘And His Majesty will be at your side.’

  ‘And he’s had plenty of practice proclaiming queens,’ Catherine Tilney says sourly.

  But Kitty looks more anxious than ever at the thought of the king’s brooding presence. ‘Is he all right now?’ she whispers.

  ‘Am I to go on holding this mirror, because my arms are about to drop off?’ Catherine Tilney demands rudely.

  ‘Oh, don’t be cross,’ Katheryn pleads with her maid. ‘Just hold it up. You’d be terrified if you were me.’

  ‘I’ll prop it.’ The young woman leans it against the wall.

  ‘Anyway, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,’ Kitty says desperately, choosing a gown at random. ‘I’ll wear that one, with my pearls.’