‘They are defeated?’

‘Well, he hanged seventy monks from the roof timbers of their own abbey,’ she says bitterly. ‘So they won’t defy him again. But no, I believe the true faith will never be defeated.’

She turns us so that we are strolling back to the door again. She smiles and nods at someone who calls ‘safe journey’ to her, but I cannot smile too.

‘The king fears his own people,’ she says. ‘He fears rivals. He even fears me. He is my father and yet sometimes I think he has gone half-mad with mistrust. Any fear he has, however foolish, is real to him. If he so much as dreams that Lord Lisle has betrayed him, then Lord Lisle is a dead man. If someone suggests that his troubles with you are part of a plot, then you are in the gravest of danger. If you can get away, you should do. He cannot tell fear from truth. He cannot tell nightmares from reality.’

‘I am Queen of England,’ I say. ‘They cannot accuse me of witchcraft.’

She turns to face me for the first time. ‘That won’t save you,’ she says. ‘It didn’t save Anne Boleyn. They accused her of witchcraft and they found the evidence and they found her guilty. She was as much queen as you.’ She suddenly laughs as if I have said something funny, and I see that some of my ladies have come out of the hall and are watching us. I laugh too but I am sure anyone could hear the fear in my voice. She takes my arm. ‘If anyone asks me what we were talking about when we walked out and back to the steps again, I shall say that I was complaining that I would be late, and I was afraid of being tired.’

‘Yes,’ I agree but I am so frightened that I am shaking as if I were chilled with cold. ‘I shall say you were looking to see when they would be ready.’

Princess Mary presses my arm. ‘My father has changed the laws of this land,’ she says. ‘It is now a crime of treason, punishable by death, even to think ill of the king. You don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to do anything. Your own secret thoughts are treason now.’

‘I am queen,’ I maintain stubbornly.

‘Listen,’ she says bluntly. ‘He has changed the process of justice too. You don’t have to be condemned by a court. You can be condemned to death on a Bill of Attainder. That is nothing more than the king’s order, supported by his parliament. And they never refuse to support him. Queen or beggar, if the king wants you dead he just has to order it now. He does not even have to sign the warrant for an execution, he only has to use a seal.’

I find I am clenching my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. ‘What do you think I should do?’