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And she proceeds to do so, not just ten but the entire plate, until juice drips down her chin and she thinks she’ll vomit if she has more. Maybe that would be a good thing.

“Would you like more?” Henry says, casually, as she casts the final core onto the silverware.

“Perhaps later,” she says, dabbing at her chin with the napkin on her shoulder. The sparkling fever is back, and she’s bolder now that she knows Henry thinks she has something that he wants.

“What would you do if I took six husbands?” she asks him.

“I would kill the other five and make myself your one,” he says.

“What if the kingdom depended on me marrying six men, as it does with you?”

“Then I would respect the laws of the kingdom, I suppose. But I wouldn’t like it. I certainly wouldn’t attempt to befriend your other husbands.”

“Why not? It isn’t their fault.”

“Of course not. But I think it would say something about my love for you. It might make you feel that my love was light.”

“Do you doubt my love?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

He offers her his hand. “Is it time for my gift?” she says.

“Yes. Come with me.”

He leads her from the table, out through the banqueting hall so that everyone can see them.

“Follow us!” he calls out.

The plague is coming for her. Her skin prickles with hidden white hair. George and Mary flank them. Mary puts a hand on Boleyn’s spare arm, steadying her.

Out in the courtyard, on the cobbles, a stage has been erected from the same dark wood as the mahogany trees in the forest around Brynd.

Standing on it, their hands cuffed, are three people: Boleyn’s maidservant, the one with the pretty voice who led her to the sunscína ; a young boy, the dirt of a hard day’s work upon him; and Oswyn.

“There have been troubling rumours spreading about you, my love,” Henry says loudly.

“They say that you caused Queen Seymour’s miscarriage, and the mine collapse.

They even say you are planning a rebellion against me.

I don’t like it. I don’t like false rumours.

All three of these people have spread such rumours.

My present to you, therefore, is one of their lives. ”

“That’s not necessary, my love,” Boleyn says, her voice hoarse.

“Of course it is. I won’t brook gossip around my beloved queens. If I don’t punish them, then people will think I believe the rumours. They will believe that the rumours are true. You don’t want that, do you?”

“But to execute them, Henry…”

She takes his arm and tries to make it seem like a loving gesture, rather than a way to stay upright.

“It is always necessary to punish treason, Boleyn. We must be a country united. You’re an intelligent woman. You know this.”

“But do you have proof that they are responsible, Henry?”

“I do.”

“May I see it?”

“Do you believe me capable of sentencing innocents to death?”

“No, of course not, Henry. Of course not.”

“So which one would you like to see punished? The other two will go free, to show my generosity.”

A gift indeed. A poisoned gift, to keep her in line, and to spread the rumours further. Because she will be the one blamed for this death. A child, a young woman or the man she is certain has only ever defended her. How can she possibly choose which life means the least?

“May I have a moment to consider who deserves death the most?”

“Of course.”

It’s an impossible choice. She cannot talk herself into justifying any one of them dying, and yet she must choose, or Henry will accuse her of all the rumours.

He is making a murderer of her. She looks each of the accused in the eyes and sees only weariness there.

God knows what they have endured since being taken by the king’s men.

Then she realises one more thing: the stage is bare.

“How will they be executed?”

“Well, since I am only executing one, it must be a show of strength. They will be hung, drawn and quartered.”

Boleyn cannot stop the laughter from bubbling up through her throat. She turns blindly to her family, who step back instinctively. They cannot share this guilt. It must be hers alone.

“Who would you advise me to choose?” she asks Henry.

“No, no, my dear. You are the one who has been wronged. You alone must decide who must pay the price.”

The answer comes to her then, as clearly as if the goddess herself had placed it there. Except no goddess did this. This is her own conscience, telling her that while she may not have the courage to throw herself on that stage, she does have the cowardice to avoid the choice entirely.

“All of them,” she says. “Execute all of them, but, my king, because you are merciful, let it be a quicker death. Let them die by the axe.”

Henry smiles the slow smile of a hunter admiring its prey’s attempts to escape a trap. She wonders how much he knows, how much he suspects, and whether someone has told him or whether it is her own behaviour that has betrayed her.

“That seems like a fair bargain.”

He nods at a hooded man. All three, boy, woman, man, are pushed to their knees by their guards. Oswyn watches Boleyn blankly. The other two stare at the wooden stage. Their last sight is not of their loved ones or a comfortable pillow, but of a dirty, splintered plank.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry , she thinks.

The executioner works swiftly, methodically. Thunk, thunk . Henry grips her arm and she knows she must watch. Oswyn is last, and he keeps his gaze fixed on hers until the very end. Thunk .

“Thank you for my present, my love,” she says. “You are very good.”

He turns her to him, his touch gentle as he tucks a stray lock of hair into her hood. “Come back to me, Boleyn,” he says, so that only she can hear. “I love you. You love me. I don’t like playing these games with you, my darling.”

Games.

“Do I still bewitch you, Henry?” Boleyn asks. He opens his mouth to answer, but the wails of a grieving woman rise from the road beyond Brynd, and Henry leads Boleyn back inside.

Beneath Boleyn’s gown, the old rings begin to prickle.

The white hairs unfurl. Somewhere, across the forests of Brynd and the hills of her family estates, a wolf pack howls for the girl it could not take.

Inside, Boleyn froths and shakes. So the rumours say she’s a witch do they? Well, maybe she is. Maybe she will be.