“Agnes, you do wrong to presume on your long friendship with Her Grace to distress her,” Lady Rochford says. I adore how she can say things like that. The words are as good as a play, and her tone is like a shower of February rain down your neck. “This is idle gossip about the king’s ill health, for which we should be praying.”

“I do pray,” I say quickly, for everyone says I go into chapel and spend all my time craning my head over the edge of the queen’s box to see Thomas Culpepper, who glances up at me and smiles. His smile is the best thing in church; it lights up the chapel like a miracle. “I do pray. And when it is Lent, God knows, I will have nothing to do but pray.”

Lady Rochford nods. “Indeed, we shall all pray for the king’s health.”

“But why? Is he so very ill?” I ask her quietly, so that Agnes and the rest of them can’t hear. Sometimes I wish, indeed, that I had never allowed them all to join me. They were good enough for the maids’ chamber at Lambeth, but really, I don’t think they always behave as proper ladies at the queen’s court. I am sure Queen Anne never had a rowdy ladies’ room like mine. Her ladies were better behaved by far. We would never have dared to speak to her as my ladies speak to me.

“The wound on his leg has closed up again,” Lady Rochford says. “Surely you were listening when the physician explained it?”

“I didn’t understand,” I say. “I started listening, but then I didn’t understand. I just stopped hearing the words.”

She frowns. “Years ago, the king took a dreadful injury in his leg. The wound has never healed. You know that much, at least.”

“Yes,” I say sulkily. “Everyone knows that much.”

“The wound has gone bad and has to be drained; every day the pus from the flesh has to be drained away.”

“I know that,” I say. “Don’t talk about it.”

“Well, the wound has closed,” she says.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It has healed? He is better.”

“The wound closes over the top, but it is still bad underneath,” she explains. “The poison cannot get away; it mounts to his belly, to his heart.”

“No!” I am quite shocked.

“Last time this happened we feared that we might lose him,” she says most seriously. “His face went black as a poisoned corpse; he lay like a dead man until they opened the wound again and drained off the poison.”

“How do they open it?” I ask. “You know, this is really disgusting.”

“They cut into it and then they hold it open,” she says. “They wedge it open with little chips of gold. They have to push the chips into the wound to keep it raw, otherwise it will close over. He has to bear the pain of an open wound all the time, and they will have to do it again. Cut into his leg and then cut again.”

“Then he will be well again?” I ask brightly; I really want her to stop telling me these things.

“No,” she says. “Then he will be as he was, lame and in pain, and being poisoned by it. The pain makes him angry, and, worse than that, it makes him feel old and weary. The lameness means he cannot be the man he was. You helped him to feel young again, but now the wound reminds him that he is an old man.”

“He can’t really have thought he was young. He can’t have thought he was young and handsome. Not even he can have thought that.”

She looks at me seriously. “Oh, Katherine, he did think he was young and in love. He has to be made to think that again.”

“But what can I do?” I can feel myself pouting. “I cannot put ideas in his head. Besides, he does not come to my bed while he is ill.”

“You will have to go to him,” she says. “Go to him and make something up that will make him feel young and in love again. Make him feel like a young man, filled with lust.”

I frown. “I don’t know how.”

“What would you do if he were a young man?”

“I could tell him that one of the young men of the court is in love with me,” I suggest. “I could make him jealous. There are young men here,” I am thinking of Thomas Culpepper,“that I know I could really, truly desire.”

“Never,” she says urgently. “Never do that. You don’t know how dangerous it is to do that.”

“Yes, but you said-”

“Can you not think of a way that would make him feel in love again without putting your neck on the block?” she demands irritably.

“Really!” I exclaim. “I only thought-”

“Think again,” she says, quite rudely.

I say nothing. I am not thinking; I am purposely not speaking to show her that she has been rude, and I will not have it.

“Tell him that you are afraid he wants to go back to the Duchess of Cleves,” she says.

This is so surprising that I forget to sulk, and I look at her in astonishment. “But that is just what Agnes was saying, and you told her not to distress me.”

“Exactly,” she says. “That is why it is such a clever lie. Because it is all but true. Half the court is saying it behind their hands; Agnes Restwold says it to your face. If you ever thought for a moment about anything but yourself and your looks and your jewels, you would indeed be anxious and distressed. And, best of all, if you go to him and you behave anxiously and distressed, then he will feel that two women have been fighting over him and will regain confidence in his own charm again. If you do it well, it might get him back into your bed before Lent.”

I hesitate. “I want him to be happy, of course,” I say carefully. “But if he does not come to my bed before Lent, then it does not much matter…”

“It does matter. This is not about your pleasure or even his,” she says gravely. “He has to get a son on you. You seem to keep forgetting it is not about dancing or music or even jewels or land. You do not earn your place as queen by being the woman he dotes on; you earn your place as queen by being the mother of his son. Until you give him a son, I don’t think he will even have you crowned.”

“I must be crowned,” I protest.

“Then you must get him into your bed to give you a child,” she says. “Anything else is too dangerous even to think about.”

“I’ll go.” I sigh a great hard-done-by sigh, so she can see that I am not frightened by her threats, but on the contrary I am wearily going to do my duty. “I’ll go and tell him I am unhappy.”

By luck, when I get there, the outer presence chamber is unusually empty, so many people have gone home. So Thomas Culpepper is almost alone, playing at dice, right hand against left, in the window seat.

“Are you winning?” I ask him, trying to speak lightly.

He leaps to his feet as he sees me, and bows.

“I always win, Your Grace,” he says. His smile makes my heart skip a beat. It really does, it truly does; when he tosses his head like that and smiles, I can hear my heart go thud-thud.

“That is not a great skill if you are playing alone,” I say aloud; and to myself I say, And that’s not very witty.

“I win at dice and I win at cards, but I am hopeless at love,” he says very quietly.

I glance behind me; Katherine Tylney has stopped to talk to the Duke of Hertford’s kinsman and is not listening, for once. Catherine Carey is at a discreet distance, looking out of the window.

“You are in love?” I ask.

“You must know it,” he says in a whisper.

I hardly dare think. He must mean me; he must be about to declare his love for me. But I swear if he is talking about someone else I shall just die. I can’t bear him to want someone else. But I keep my voice light.

“Why should I know it?”

“You must know who I love,” he says. “You, of all people in the world.”

This conversation is so delicious I can feel my toes curling up inside my new slippers. I feel hot; I am certain I am blushing and he will be able to see.

“Must I?”

“The king will see you now,” announces the idiot Dr. Butt, and I jump and start away from Thomas Culpepper, for I had utterly forgotten that I was there to see the king and to make him love me again. “I’ll come in a minute,” I say over my shoulder.