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There was a Persephone, standing near Lord Mountjoy.

My heart felt a hush as I beheld her. I swear my first thought was of Persephone>manhick hair, tore out its bindings so that it fell free over her shoulders and even covered her face, all but her parted lips, which I devoured. In a fever-fit of excitement, I undressed her, perplexed by the fastenings of her clothes (for I had never undressed Katherine; her maids of honour did that), trying not to harm them. She had to show me, else I would have ripped them.

When we lay side by side on the musicians’ daybed, she turned toward the torch so that the amber-coloured light bathed her body and sweet face. “Bessie—Bessie—” I wanted to master my need, at least draw it out a little, but it mastered me, and I pulled her under me in the ancient act of submission, crushed her beneath me, plunged into her body—O God, she was a virgin!—and in a frenzy, sweat exploding from my whole body, I drove myself into her again and again (hearing dimly her cries in my ear) until I burst open inside her.

I spiralled down into a great darkness, turning, turning, landing softly.

She was crying, fighting for breath, clawing at my shoulders.

“Jesu, Bessie ...” I released her, pulled her up, embraced her. She gasped for air, crying all the while. “I am sorry, forgive me, forgive me—” The mad beast had gone, leaving a conscience-stricken man to repair the damage. I comforted her, hating myself. Eventually she stopped crying and became calm. I began my apologies again. She put up a shaking finger against my lips.

“It is done,” she said slowly. “And I am glad of it.”

Now I truly comprehended how ignorant I was of women. “I behaved as a beast, and injured your ... your honour.” I had not even thought of the virginity beforehand.

“If it was this difficult with someone whose body I craved, think how much more difficult it would have been with someone to whom I was indifferent.”

“But you would not have found yourself ... thus ... with someone you ... didn’t want.”

She shook her head. “What do you think marriage is, for a woman?”

Mary. Mary and Louis. God, how could the Mirror of Naples compensate for that?

“But now ... when you come to your marriage-bed ... I’ve robbed you.”

“I’ll pretend.”

“But you can’t pretend—if it is not so!”

“I have heard ... that it is easy to pretend, and men are content with that.”

I was covered with sweat, the daybed was made rank with her deflowering, I was thoroughly shamed—and yet (O, most shameful of all!) with her words, and the thought of her later in another man’s bed, my lust began to flame once more.

Just then she reached over and touched my cheek. “We must go. But oh—let us spend another few moments....” She did not wish to flee? She did not despise me? Truly, I knew nothing of women—or of my own nature, either.

It was dawn when we finally left the musicians’ chamber, creeping down the stone stairs and stealing across the silent Banquet Hall, where the flowers still lay scatterit icurb my tendency to escalate the stakes. None of the ordinary things seemed to matter.

Mary had embarked for France with a full court of her own, gloriously dowered and attended. Even children were appointed as pages and maids of honour. The two Seymour lads, aged nine and six, and Thomas Boleyn’s two daughters, aged ten and seven, were on board one of the fourteen “great ships” of Mary’s flotilla.

It was late one evening in Wolsey’s quarters where I first read the name. That name. I had been checking the list in a cursory fashion.

Nan de Boleine.

“Who’s this?” I mumbled. I was exhausted from Bessie that afternoon, and needed sleep.

“The Boleyn girl,” Wolsey said.

“Why the devil do they affect this spelling? I’d not recognized the name.

“It’s ‘Boleyn’ that’s the affected spelling,” said Wolsey. “The family name is originally ‘Bullen. ’But ’‘Boleyn’ or ‘Boleine’ looks more prestigious.”

“Like Wolsey for ‘Wulcy’?” I grunted. “All this name-changing is frivolous. I like it not. So both of Boleyn’s daughters