I am dressed and waiting by nine in the morning, but nobody comes. I hear Mass and take breakfast in sulky silence, and still nothing. But then, just before noon, I hear the welcome tramp of feet on the stones of the path, and I dash to the window, see my uncle’s black square hat bobbing along, the staves of office in the hands of the other councillors, the royal standard before them, and I rush back to my seat and sit down, put my feet together, my hands in my lap, and cast down my eyes in great penitence.

They open the double doors, and everyone comes trooping in, dressed in their best. I rise to my feet and curtsy to my uncle as I should, since he is head of my house, but he no longer bows to me as his queen. I stand and wait. I am surprised he doesn’t look more relieved that this is all over.

“We have come to take you to the Tower,” he says.

I nod. I had thought we would go to Kenninghall but perhaps this is even better; the king often uses the Tower as his London palace, perhaps I am to meet him there. “As you wish, my lord duke,” I say sweetly.

He looks a little surprised at my demure tone. I have to try very hard not to giggle.

“Katherine, you are to be executed,” he says. “You will go to the Tower as a condemned traitor.”

“Traitor?” I repeat.

“I told you last time,” he says impatiently. “You were convicted by a Bill of Attainder. I told you. You are not required to stand trial; you understood that. You confessed your sins. That confession has been entered against your name. Now the time has come for the sentence.”

“I confessed so that I would be forgiven,” I point out.

He looks at me quite exasperated. “But you have not been forgiven,” he says. “All that was left to agree was the sentence.”

“And?” I say a little pertly.

He takes a deep breath as if to dispel his irritation. “His Grace has agreed that you shall be put to death.”

“He will forgive me when I get to the Tower?” I suggest.

To my increasing anxiety he shakes his head. “For God’s sake, girl, don’t be such an idiot! You cannot hope for that. There is no reason to hope for it. When he first heard what you had done, he drew his sword and said he would kill you himself. It is over, Katherine. You must prepare yourself for death.”

“That can’t happen,” I say. “I’m only sixteen. Nobody could put me to death when I’m only sixteen.”

“They can,” he says bleakly. “Believe me, they will.”

“The king will stop them.”

“It is his own wish.”

“You will stop them.”

His eyes are as cold as a fish on a marble slab. “I will not.”

“Well, somebody must stop them!”

He turns his head. “Take her,” he says.

Half a dozen men march into the room, the royal guard who used to parade so handsomely for me.

“I shan’t go,” I say. I am really afraid now. I stand to my tallest height, and I scowl at them. “I shan’t go. You can’t make me.”

They hesitate a little, and look at my uncle. He makes a quick chopping gesture with his hand. “Take her,” he says again.

I turn and run into my privy chamber, swinging the door behind me, but it delays them for only a moment; they catch it before it bangs, they are after me so quickly. I lay hold of one of the posts of the bed, and I latch my fingers around it. “I shan’t go!” I shout. “You can’t make me. You can’t touch me! I am Queen of England! Nobody can touch me!”

One of the men grabs me around the waist. The other reaches forward and unlaces my hands; as soon as my hands are free I slap the first one round the face as hard as I can, and he lets me go. But a third man grabs me again, and the second has my hands this time so though I struggle, he forces them behind my back and I hear one of the sleeves tear. “Let me go!” I scream. “You can’t hold me. I am Katherine, Queen of England. You can’t touch me, my person is sacred. Let me go!”

My uncle stands in the doorway, his face as dark as the devil. He nods to a man standing beside me, who bends down and grabs at my feet. I try to kick him, but he takes me as if I were a little bucking foal, and the three of them shuffle out of the room with me held between them. My ladies are in tears; the Warden of the Household is white with horror.

“Don’t let them take me!” I scream. Mutely, he shakes his head. I see he is clinging to the door to support himself. “Help me!” I scream. “Send for-” I break off then, for there is no one to send for. My uncle, guardian, and mentor is standing by; this is being done under his orders. My grandmother and sisters and stepmother are all under arrest; the rest of the family are frantically insisting that they hardly knew me. There is no one who will defend me, and no one has ever loved me but Francis Dereham and Tom Culpepper, and they are dead.

“I can’t go to the Tower!” I am sobbing now, the breath shaken out of me by their big, bouncy strides with me slung between them like a sack. “Don’t take me to the Tower, I beg you. Take me to the king, let me plead with him. Please. If he is determined, I’ll go to the Tower then, I’ll make a good death then, but I’m not ready yet. I’m only sixteen. I can’t die yet.”

They don’t say anything. They march up the gangplank to the barge, and I give a little wriggle thinking I might throw myself into the water and get away, but they have huge hands and they hold me tightly. They sling me onto the dais at the back of the barge, and they all but sit on me to keep me still. They have hold of my hands and my feet, and I am crying now and begging them to take me to the king, and they look away, out over the river, as if they are deaf.

My uncle and the councillors come on board, looking like men going to their own funerals. “My lord duke, hear me!” I shout, and he shakes his head at me and goes to the front of the barge, where he can’t hear or see me.

I am so afraid now that I can’t stop crying, the tears are pouring down my face and my nose is running and that brute has hold of my hands and I can’t even wipe my face. It is cold where my tears are wet on my cheeks and the disgusting taste of snot is on my lips, and they won’t even let me wipe my nose. “Please,” I say. “Please.” But nobody listens at all.

The barge goes quickly downriver; they have caught the tide just right, and the oarsmen feather their blades so they catch the safest part of the current at London Bridge. I glance up, and I wish I hadn’t; at once I see the two new heads, two fresh severed heads: Tom Culpepper and Francis Dereham, like damp, soft gargoyles, their eyes wide open and their teeth bared, a seagull struggling to find its footing on Dereham’s dark hair. They have set their heads on the spikes beside the horrible rotting shapes of so many others, and the birds will peck out their eyes and tongues, and poke sharp beaks in their ears to winkle out their brains.

“Please,” I whisper. I don’t even know what I am begging for now. I just hope that this will stop. I just want it not to be happening. “Please, good sirs… please.”

We go in by the watergate; it rolls up silently as soon as the guards see us coming, and the oarsmen ship their oars and our boat glides into the dock inside the dark shadow of the wall. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edmund Walsingham, is standing at the steps, waiting to greet me as if I were arriving to stay in the royal apartments, as if I were still queen and a pretty new queen at that. The portcullis splashes down behind us as the chains roll it down, and they lift me out of the barge and take both my arms and heave me up the steps, my feet stumbling.

“Good day, Lady Katherine,” he says, as polite as ever. But I say nothing because I cannot stop sobbing, little gasping sobs that come and go with every breath. I look back, and my uncle is standing on the barge, waiting to see me go. He will be out of the watergate like a wherry shooting the rapids the moment his duty is done. He will be desperate that the shadow of the Tower does not fall on him. He will be rushing back to the king to assure him that the Howard family has given up their bad girl. It is me who is going to pay the price for the Howard ambition, not him.

I scream, “Uncle!” but he just gives a gesture of his hand as if to say, “Take her away,” and they do. They lead me up the stairs, past the White Tower, and across the green. The workmen are building a platform on the lawn, a little wooden stage standing about three feet high, with broad steps going up to it. Others are fencing off the paths. The men on either side of me walk a little faster and look away, and this makes me absolutely certain that this is my scaffold, and the fence is to hold back the crowd who will come to see me die.

“How many people will come?” I ask; the little coughing sobs make it hard for me to breathe.

“A couple of hundred,” the warden says uncomfortably. “It is not open to the public. Just to the court. As a favor to you. The king’s own orders.”

I nod; it is not much of a favor, I think. Ahead the door of the tower opens before us, and I go up the narrow stone stairs with one man slightly ahead of me hauling me up and the other pushing from behind. “I can walk,” I say, and they let go of my arms but stay close beside me. My room is on the first floor; the large glazed window overlooks the green. There is a fire in the grate, there is a stool by the fire and a table with a Bible, and beyond that there is a bed.

The men let me go and stand by the door. The warden and I look at each other. “Shall you be wanting anything?” he asks.

I laugh out loud at this most ridiculous question. “Like what?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Some delicacy, or some spiritual comfort?”

I shake my head. I don’t even know if there is a God anymore, for if Henry is special in the sight of God and he knows God’s will, then I suppose God wants me to die, but in private as a special favor. “I should like to have the block,” I say.