Frankie leaned over and whispered to me, her eyes flicking between Essex and Robin. “I will not lie beside Essex for all eternity whatever happens.” Slowly, she turned her eyes to me, as if her words were lamps approaching through a dark mist. “Prince Henry despised my family and loathed Robin. Now that he is dead, something might be done about my marriage.” Perhaps it showed a cold heart to think of her own advantage when the heir to the throne was passing in his coffin below her nose. I think the opposite. Unlike most of us that day, she knew him. They had grown up at the same time, often in the same palaces. She remembered the feel of her hand in his when they danced. His death, and with it that of his heirs, made finding her own happiness more urgent.

“My great-uncle Northampton is running the country now, with Robin,” said Frankie, looking toward him. “I shall request an audience. Perhaps you are right to be hopeful of change.”

I had not said that I was hopeful of change. Only that it would come. And if her great-uncle were involved, I would be more afraid than hopeful.

A summons from Lord Northampton, requiring me to attend Frankie at Salisbury House, arrived two days before Christmas, but with no hint as to the reason. As Weston and I walked to the Strand, I prayed with unusual fervor that Frankie was not ill, discovered in adultery, badly beaten by her husband or suffering any other calamity.

Salisbury House reared up like forbidding cliffs, three stories high with taller corner towers. The new palace had been built by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and was now occupied by his son, William Cecil, Frankie’s brother-in-law. It was so recently finished that the wall brackets lacked torches and the coats of arms were not yet gilded. Many of the windows in the inner court were shuttered but I could see that the rooms behind glowed brightly. The sound of music filled the air, growing loud at one point as a footman opened the main doors to let out a dog. The Howards and Salisburys were marking Christmas away from a court in mourning. I walked toward the sound of laughter, but Weston took my arm and steered me instead to a door in an unlit corner.

“These are Lord Northampton’s instructions,” he said. I wondered how it was that Weston knew this house and this entrance.

We climbed a winding stair to a cramped and bare passage on the second floor. I had heard that concealed ways for servants were fashionable in new houses, but never expected to use one. I could well imagine old Maggie’s indignity at being hidden from us, as if she were something shameful; this was one new fashion of which I did not approve.