I have had a letter from my brother, an utterly mad letter; it distresses me as much as it angers me. He complains of the king in the wildest of terms, and he commands me to return home, insist on my marriage, or never more be a sister to him. He offers me no advice as to how I am to insist on my marriage – clearly he does not even know that the king has remarried already – nor any help if I want to return home. I imagine, as he knew well enough when he gave me these impossible choices, that I am left with the single option of never more being a sister to him.

Little loss to me! When he left me here without a word, gave me an ambassador who was almost unpaid, failed to send adequate proof of the renunciation of the Lorraine betrothal, he was no good brother to me then. He is no good brother now. Least of all is he my good brother when the Duke of Norfolk and half the Privy Council come thundering down to Richmond in a rage, since they have, of course, picked up his letter almost from the moment it left his hand, copied it, translated it, and read it before it ever came to me. Now they want to know if I think my brother will incite the Holy Roman Emperor to war against England and Henry on my behalf?

As calmly as I can, I point out to them that the Holy Roman Emperor is not likely to make war at my brother’s behest and that (emphatically) I do not ask my brother to make war at my behest.

“I warn the king that I cannot rule my brother,” I say, speaking slowly and directly to the Duke of Norfolk. “William will do as he wishes. He does not take my advice.”

The duke looks doubtful. I turn to Richard Beard and speak in German. “Please point out to His Grace that if I could make my brother obey me, then I would have told him to send the document which showed that the betrothal to Lorraine was renounced,” I say.

He turns and translates, and the duke’s dark eyes gleam at my mistake. “Except it was not renounced,” he reminds me.

I nod. “I forgot.”

He shows me a wintry smile. “I know you cannot command your brother,” he concedes.

I turn to Richard Beard again. “Please point out to His Grace that this letter from my brother actually proves that I have honored the king, since it makes clear that he has so little faith in me that he threatens me with being cut off from my family forever.” Richard Beard translates, and the duke’s cold smile widens slightly.

“What he thinks and what he does, how he blusters and threatens me, is clearly not of my choosing,” I conclude.

Thank God. They may be the king’s council, but they do not share his unreasonable terrors; they do not see plots where there are none – except when it suits them, of course. Only when it suits them to be rid of an enemy like Thomas Cromwell, or a rival like poor Lord Lisle, do they exaggerate the king’s fears and assure him that they are real. The king is in perpetual anxiety about one conspiracy or another, and the council play on his fears like a master might tune a lute. Provided that I am neither threat nor rival to any one of them, they will not alert any royal fears about me. So the frail peace between the king and me is not broken by my brother’s intemperate speech. I wonder, did he even stop for a moment to think if his letter would put me in such danger? Worse still, I wonder, did he intend to put me in such danger?

“Do you think your brother will make trouble for us?” Norfolk asks me simply.

I answer him in German. “Not for my sake, sir. He would do nothing for me. He has never done anything for my benefit, except to let me go. He might use me as the excuse, but I am not his cause. And even if he meant to make trouble, I doubt very much that the Holy Roman Emperor would go to war with the King of England over a fourth wife, when the king has already helped himself to his fifth.”

Richard Beard translates this, and both he and Norfolk have to hide their amusement. “I have your word then,” the duke says shortly.

I nod. “You do. And I never break my word. I shall make no trouble for the king. I wish to live here alone, in peace.”

He looks around. He is something of a connoisseur of beautiful buildings. He has built his own great house, and he has torn down some fine abbeys. “You are happy here?”

“I am,” I say, and I am telling the truth. “I am happy here.”

I should have warned Lady Margaret Douglas not to meddle with a man who was certain to land her in trouble, but I was so absorbed with trying to keep Katherine Howard steady in her first days of marriage that I did not watch the ladies as I should have done. Besides, Lady Margaret is the king’s own niece, daughter of his sister. Who would have thought that his hard, suspicious gaze would fall on her? In the first days of his marriage? When he told us all that for the first time in his long life he had found happiness? Why, in those honeymoon weeks, should I have thought that he would plot his own niece’s arrest?

Because this is Henry – that is why. Because I have been in his court for long enough to know that things he may overlook when he is chasing a woman will be reckoned up the moment that he has her. Nothing distracts the king from his suspicious terrors for very long. As soon as he was up and out of bed from his fever he was looking around the court to see who had misbehaved in his absence. I was so desperate that he should not suspect the queen and her silly friends that I forgot to look to her ladies. In any case, Lady Margaret Douglas would never have listened to me, given her complete inability to see any sense at all. All the Tudors follow their hearts and make up their reasons after, and Lady Margaret is just like her mother before her, Queen Margaret of Scotland, who fell in love with a man with nothing to recommend him, and now her daughter has done the same. Only a few years ago Lady Margaret married Thomas Howard, my kinsman, in secret and had the pleasure of enjoying him for no more than days before the king discovered the couple and sent the young man to the Tower for his impertinence. He was dead within months, and she was in disgrace. Of course! Of course! Where is the surprise in this? You cannot have the king’s niece marrying where she pleases and her fancy lighting on a Howard! You cannot have one of the greatest families in England, close to the throne on their own account, coming closer yet because a girl likes a dark glance and a merry smile and a certain devil-may-care approach to life. The king swore he would teach her the respect her position deserves, and for months she was a widow with a broken heart.

Well, it’s mended now.

I knew that something was going on, and within weeks everyone knew of it, too. When the king took to his bed with his fever, the young couple gave up all attempts to conceal their love affair. Anyone with eyes could see that the king’s niece was wholly in love with the queen’s brother Charles.

Another Howard, of course, and a favorite: a member of the Privy Council and high in the family command. What did he think he would gain from such a betrothal? The Howards are ambitious, but even he must have considered that he might be overreaching himself. Good God, did he think he might get Scotland by this girl? Did he fancy himself as King Consort? And she? Why would she not see her own danger? And what is it about these Howards that is a magnet for the Tudors? You would think it was some kind of alchemy, like jam for wasps.

But I should have warned her that she would be discovered. It was a certainty. We live in a house of glass, as if the Venetian glass blowers of Murano had devised a special torment for us. In this court there is not a secret that can be kept; there is not a curtain that can conceal; there is not a wall that is not transparent. Everything is always discovered. Sooner or later, everyone knows everything. And as soon as it is known, everything splinters into a million jagged shards.