The King grew bored of us then and turned his attention to the young man beside him, who was as fresh and lovely as Frankie herself. He possessed male and female beauty equally. I guessed him to be about twenty or twenty-two summers, half his sovereign’s age, beardless and smooth-skinned as a girl, yet broad in the shoulder. His fair hair was elaborately frizzed around his face and from one ear dangled a sapphire of a size that could only have come from a King. Not yet masked for Court life, his face revealed the heart below and I found in it the melancholy of a man needing love. He gently took the worm from his monarch’s hand while the King fussed over him like any besotted man would his wife. He patted his cheek and smoothed a fold in the young man’s collar, picking off a loose thread. But when the youth glanced up it was not at the King but at Frankie. She immediately looked away and I wondered who he was, and for how long he had been flirting with her.

“Go on, Stallenge,” the King commanded.

A man standing at the end of the tables began to talk of mulberry trees, white and red, their leaves the diet of the worms. After a very short time the Court grew restless and the guide ushered his audience toward the adjoining shed. The King kept the young man as close as the miniature greyhound that shivered at his heels. The dog was so thin that every bone was visible through its pelt, the tail an osseous crescent no thicker than a pencil line. In that moment I understood that our monarch felt as vulnerable as his elfin hound. From this sprang his need for strong wine and padded doublets.

I was not so self-assured as to push my way among nobles and was last to enter the second shed. It was lighter and cooler than the one we had left, festooned with thick cobwebs in which lodged a multitude of small, opaque orbs.

“That was what my mother gave me,” Frankie whispered, making space for me by her side. She was treating me as an equal and a friend, although I was neither. Several courtiers looked me up and down, then turned away without so much as a nod.

“In here cocoons are harvested,” Master Stallenge continued. “We will soon outstrip France in the production and finishing of silk.” The King clapped and all followed suit.