The income from my patented starch recipes covered the wages of our servants, which were generous at twelve pounds a year, and the clocks and crystal I received in return for my skills I sold to pay our most vociferous creditors; but our combined earnings were about a quarter of what we needed. Having witnessed my parents’ rapid decline, I did not consider it a sin to want better for my family, so I had finally asked Frankie for advice. She had appeared to take little interest, but later I realized that this was from tact, for some weeks later she extended to me the most extraordinary invitation of my life.

“Will the Queen notice us in this crowd?” I asked.

Frankie tried to hide her smile but failed. “This is where supplicants wait,” she explained, leading me toward a pair of guarded doors. Was I not a supplicant?

“Sir Thomas Overbury didn’t wait to see the Queen,” interjected Carr. “There’s no love lost between them.”

“He is bold to let that be known,” said Frankie. “She is kind to her supporters but terrible to her enemies.”

“I’m only telling you.”

“You and the Queen, however, are great friends?” she said, eyebrows raised, and Carr let out a great bark of laughter.

“I’ve been sent to make it so.”

“I wish you luck,” said Frankie.

“Aye, Sir Thomas said it was a fool’s errand.”

There was not a hand’s breadth between their heads. He was flirting shamelessly but at the same time appeared lost; he had no friends at the Queen’s Court and was hiding behind our skirts.

We were only halfway across the room when the doors opened and the Queen was announced. Conversation ceased; the air filled with the sigh of silk as we sank low. I was not alone in peering through my lashes at the tall woman who walked into the chamber. She had a nose like a sail. Her face was too long to be pretty, the chin too bulbous, but it was the noblest countenance ever I beheld. Her fashioning was a mistake to my mind, all girlish bows and ruffles, when her countenance was that of a prince, but I approved the white ruff, wired up to cradle her head like a shell, magnificent jewels pinned to it. These jewels appeared in all the woodblock prints I had seen of her; the C in emeralds was for her brother, King Christian of Denmark, and the S in sapphires for her mother, Queen Sophie. She liked it to be known that she was the daughter, sister and mother of kings, and, as such, held a better pedigree than her husband.

She nodded greetings or exchanged brief words with petitioners. I felt hotter and hotter as she neared, my guts bubbling with elation as she reached our little group. I stared at her shoes, each adorned with a pink silk rose larger than my hand.