Princess Mary shakes her head. “No. I should think fewer than half the people welcome the changes, and many wish for the old ways back again. When the king denied the authority of the Pope and destroyed the monasteries, there was a great rising of men in the north of the country, determined to defend the church and the holy houses. They called it the Pilgrimage of Grace, and they marched under the banner of the five wounds of Jesus Christ. The king sent the hardest man in the kingdom against them at the head of the army, and he feared them so badly that he called for a parley, spoke with sweet words, and promised them a pardon and a parliament.”

“Who was that?” Already I know.

“Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.”

“And the pardon?”

“As soon as the army had disbanded, he beheaded the leaders and hanged the followers.” She speaks with as little inflection as if she is complaining that the luggage wagon is badly packed. “He promised a parliament and a pardon on the king’s sacred word. He gave his own word, too, on his honor. It meant nothing.”

“They are defeated?”

“Well, he hanged seventy monks from the roof timbers of their own abbey,” she says bitterly. “So they won’t defy him again. But no, I believe the true faith will never be defeated.”

She turns us so that we are strolling back to the door again. She smiles and nods at someone who calls “Safe journey” to her, but I cannot smile, too.

“The king fears his own people,” she says. “He fears rivals. He even fears me. He is my father, and yet sometimes I think he has gone half mad with mistrust. Any fear he has, however foolish, is real to him. If he so much as dreams that Lord Lisle has betrayed him, then Lord Lisle is a dead man. If someone suggests that his troubles with you are part of a plot, then you are in the gravest of danger. If you can get away, you should do. He cannot tell fear from truth. He cannot tell nightmares from reality.”

“I am Queen of England,” I say. “They cannot accuse me of witchcraft.”

She turns to face me for the first time. “That won’t save you,” she says. “It didn’t save Anne Boleyn. They accused her of witchcraft and they found the evidence and they found her guilty. She was as much queen as you.” She suddenly laughs as if I have said something funny, and I see that some of my ladies have come out of the hall and are watching us. I laugh, too, but I am sure anyone could hear the fear in my voice. She takes my arm. “If anyone asks me what we were talking about when we walked out and back to the steps again, I shall say that I was complaining that I would be late, and I was afraid of being tired.”

“Yes,” I agree, but I am so frightened that I am shaking as if I were chilled with cold. “I shall say you were looking to see when they would be ready.”

Princess Mary presses my arm. “My father has changed the laws of this land,” she says. “It is now a crime of treason, punishable by death, even to think ill of the king. You don’t have to say anything; you don’t have to do anything. Your own secret thoughts are treason now.”

“I am queen,” I maintain stubbornly.

“Listen,” she says bluntly. “He has changed the process of justice, too. You don’t have to be condemned by a court. You can be condemned to death on a Bill of Attainder. That is nothing more than the king’s order, supported by his parliament. And they never refuse to support him. Queen or beggar, if the king wants you dead, he just has to order it now. He does not even have to sign the warrant for an execution, he only has to use a seal.”

I find I am clenching my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. “What do you think I should do?”

“Get away,” she says. “Get away before he comes for you.”

After she has gone I feel as if my last friend has left court. I go back to my rooms and my ladies set up a table of cards. I let them start to play, and then I summon my ambassador and take him into the window bay, where we cannot be overheard, to ask him if anyone has questioned him about me. He says they have not; he is ignored by everyone, isolated as if he were carrying the plague. I ask him if he could hire or buy two fast horses and keep them outside the castle walls in case of my sudden need. He says he has no money to hire or buy horses, and in any case the king has guards on my doors night and day. The men who I thought were there to keep me safe, to open the doors to my presence chamber, to announce my guests, are now my jailers.

I am very afraid. I try to pray, but even the words of the prayers are a trap. I cannot appear as if I am becoming a Papist, a Papist like Lord Lisle is now said to be; and yet I must not appear to have held to my brother’s religion; the Lutherans are suspected of being part of Cromwell’s plot to ruin the king.

When I see the king, I try to behave pleasantly and calmly before him. I dare not challenge him, nor even protest my innocence. Most frightening of all is his manner to me, which is now warm and friendly, as if we were acquaintances about to part after a short journey together. He behaves as if our time together has been an enjoyable interlude that is now naturally drawing to a close.

He will not say good-bye to me, I know that. Princess Mary has warned me of that. There is no point waiting for the moment when he tells me that I am to face an accusation. I know that one of these evenings when I rise from the dinner table and curtsy to him and he kisses my hand so courteously will be the last time I ever see him. I may walk from the hall with my ladies following me to find my rooms filled with soldiers and my clothes already packed, my jewels returned to the treasury. It is a short journey from the palace of Westminster to the Tower; they will take me by river in the darkness and I will go in by the watergate, and I will leave by the block on Tower Green.

The ambassador has written to my brother to say that I am desperately frightened, but I do not hope for a reply. William will not mind my being sick with fear, and by the time they learn of the charges against me it will be too late to save me. And perhaps William would not even choose to save me. He has allowed this peril to come about. He must have hated me more than I ever knew.

If anyone is to save me, it will have to be me, myself. But how can a woman save herself against the charge of witchcraft? If Henry tells the world that he is impotent because I have unmanned him, how can I prove differently? If he tells the world that he can lie with Katherine Howard but not with me, then his case is proved and my denial is just another instance of satanic cunning. A woman cannot prove her innocence when a man bears witness against her. If Henry wants me strangled as a witch, then nothing can save me. He claimed that Lady Anne Boleyn was a witch, and she died for it. He never said good-bye to her, and he had loved her with a passion. They just came for her one day and took her away.

I am waiting now, for them to come for me.