There was a gentle knock at the door. Mary Odell and the Queen’s sister, Lady Herbert, stood in the doorway, bearing candles. They stepped aside to allow the Queen to walk into the room between them. Like the others she was dressed informally, in a gold-and-green caftan; there had been no time for the long labour with pins and corsets necessary for her to be dressed fully. Her auburn hair was tied back under a knitted hood. Under hastily applied whitelead, her face was tense. We bowed to her, my back suddenly stiff after the long day. She dismissed her ladies.

‘What news?’ she asked without preliminaries. ‘Please, tell me my book is found.’

‘Not yet, niece,’ Lord Parr said gently. ‘But there has been another development, a – complication. I am sorry to request your presence at this time of night, but matters are urgent.’

He nodded to me, and again I told my story, though missing out the part about Stice’s threat to send me Nicholas’s head. ‘Rich knows nothing of the Lamentation,’ I concluded. ‘He believes there may be something in Anne Askew’s writings which would compromise you as well as him.’

‘Rich doesn’t know we have Myldmore,’ Lord Parr added. ‘Shardlake did well in foxing him.’

‘The rogue, though.’ The Queen walked past me to the shutters, a rustle of silk and a waft of scent as she passed. She made to open them. ‘It is so hot—’

‘Please, Kate,’ Lord Parr said urgently. ‘You never know who may be watching.’

The Queen turned back to us, a bitter little smile playing on her lips. ‘Yes. For a moment I forgot, here one must guard one’s every movement.’ She breathed deeply, then took a seat and looked at each of us in turn. ‘Must we cooperate with Rich?’

‘We must at least pretend to,’ Lord Parr answered. ‘Work with his people, but watch them every moment. More pairs of eyes at the docks would be useful.’ He turned to me. ‘That information about Bale is helpful, as well.’

‘But who has the books?’ Cecil asked. ‘The four who have disappeared – McKendrick, Curdy, Vandersteyn, and that wretched guard, Leeman? Or someone else entirely? We do not even know if the missing four are still alive. Who employed Greening’s murderers? We know now it wasn’t Rich.’

I said, ‘I think the four missing men are radicals who want to get both books out of the country. We know from their actions in Germany what the Anabaptists are capable of, even if some have renounced violence now. Greening’s killers could have been henchmen of theirs, employed after an internal falling out. I have said before, if it was the conservatives that took the Lamentation, all they would need to do is lay a copy before the King.’ The Queen winced momentarily, but it had to be said. ‘I think the answer lies with Curdy’s people within the radical group.’