Dislike and disquiet prickled along my skin at his tone. There was mockery in his voice, and something else that felt more threatening and roused an instinct deep inside me. I braced myself to run from him, though I have no idea where I might have gone. But all he did was cross to the battered desk that stood in the corner of the chamber; there was a letter there, folded and sealed. He picked it up and weighed it in his hand.

“You will deliver this to the Lady Elizabeth,” he said. “She walks in the palace privy gardens each day; you will wait for her and hand it over in person.” He looked half ashamed, half defiant, but wholly determined. His voice had softened when he spoke her name.

I gaped at him. To be directed like a servant was insult indeed, and to be asked to run errands to the Lady Elizabeth... Leaving aside my personal dislike of her, this was madness. A moment before, Robert had been speaking of currying favour with the Queen. Now he was planning recklessly to consort with her most dangerous enemy.

“Robert,” I said, trying to sound calm, “is that wise?”

It was fortunate that I said no more. I saw again that ungovernable black fury rise in his eyes and I shrank from it.

“It rains,” I said petulantly. “The Lady Elizabeth will not be walking out of doors today.”

“Then you will wait until the rain stops,” my husband said.

We stared at one another for a long moment and then I snatched the letter from his hand, stowed it in my bodice, and went out of the room, rapping imperiously on the cell door to be let out.

“Can’t wait to escape your husband, eh, Mistress?” The warder leered as I pushed past him to run down the stair. The parchment of the letter pricked my skin. I could thrust it down a drain; I could tear it into a thousand little pieces; I could burn it in the fire; anything rather than conform to Robert’s assumption that he could ask his wife to deliver messages to the woman he... I paused under the lintel of the Beauchamp Tower. Did Robert love the Lady Elizabeth? Certainly he admired her and his loyalty to her was absolute. It must be to take such a risk as this.

The rain had stopped. I crossed the inner ward, skirting the Queen’s lodgings. This, I knew, was where the Lady Elizabeth was housed as her mother had been before her. I felt a sharp spurt of spiteful pleasure to think of her residing in such ill-fated luxury. I hoped she dwelt on her mother’s fate each and every day as she waited to follow her to the block. It was bitter of me, and shameful, but I could not pity her. I blamed her for driving a wedge between Robert and me even when I knew that their friendship had begun long before he had met me. He had been tainted before ever I had him; we had been doomed from the start because of her.