We sped downriver in Frankie’s barge, her sisters giving me the briefest of nods as I settled beside her. What Frankie had said of Elizabeth was true: her hair was so pale as to look gray, the effect of premature aging completed by her thin cheeks and furious gaze. Catherine was as plump as Elizabeth was gaunt, her hair a polished auburn, but she had a watery sadness about her. In the two and a half years since her marriage, she had borne and baptized three baby boys; all had been taken to God in the first few weeks of life. The urgency to produce an heir meant she would be allowed no rest and would be pregnant again soon. She seemed as adrift in her grief as her elder sisters were furious with their own unhappiness. I wondered how the nobility had survived so long, given the exhaustion of those required to bear heirs and the discord in so many of their marriages.

The journey was fast and smooth compared to the wherries I was used to. At the Tower, the Court was crammed onto a new viewing platform of the King’s devising over the lion pit. The Powder Plotters would have done better to save their gunpowder and saw through the supports of the stage instead, to have the royal family, the government and the highest nobility tumble into the mouths of lions below. I received approving looks and felt increasingly at home in my grandeur, sure it would bring me further commissions and encourage Arthur.

It was a gusty May afternoon and sunlight fell in hard shafts between gray clouds. A vermilion ostrich feather was plucked from a hat by the fingers of the breeze. Evading capture, a hundred pairs of eyes followed its nimble revolutions until the wind grew tired of its plaything and the plume sank to the floor of the pit.

“I have found you a new lace maker,” I said.

“Is the old one not good?”

“Not as good as my neighbor.”

“I trust your judgment in necromancers, so why not with lace makers?” she said in a low voice, examining the lace on her cuff. As she lifted it, I saw a fresh purple bruise on her wrist. “He keeps from my bed as if it were lined with nettles. Forman’s magic is working in that respect at least. But the angels are taking a long time to free me from him. Can you see the pit?” asked Frankie.

“No. It is an argument for smaller hats,” I said and Frankie snorted, causing those close by to look at us, including Lord Essex and her great-uncle, Lord Northampton.

“When will we be forbidden to breathe, do you think?” she said. Essex stared as if Frankie were a Billingsgate fishwife, and she stared back with a directness worthy of the epithet. He pushed his way to the corner of the platform farthest from us.