The privy gardens were to the east of the Queen’s gallery, the grass gleaming with droplets of water in the pale March sun. It was cold in the shadow of the high walls and there was something daunting about the austere formality of the paths and the statuary. It seemed I was alone, yet after a moment I caught my breath at the sight of a slender figure, cloaked and hooded, lingering by the sundial where two of the paths crossed.

She did not move as I approached. Her very stillness captivated me for her fingers were tracing the surface of the sundial as though she were trying to capture time itself. She must have heard my steps on the path yet it was only when I was close that she turned.

We looked at one another, the Princess Elizabeth and I. Her eyes contained the same sort of distant, bruised expression I had seen in Robert’s, the face of a person who had withdrawn into themselves for very survival. I waited to hate her but the sensation did not come. She looked lost and young; it was like looking at a mirror image of myself. Then she seemed to come awake and those brown eyes sharpened on me and I dropped a curtsey, demure as you please.

“My Lord asked me to deliver this to you,” I said, reaching into my bodice for the letter. The breeze caught it and tried to snatch it from my fingers. Already it had lost the heat of my body.

“Thank you,” she said.

That was all. I met Elizabeth only thrice in my life and we exchanged so few words but in that small time I knew there was a bond between us. Neither love nor hatred, it was both lesser and greater than that.

As I walked away she made no move to open Robert’s letter and when I passed through the gateway into the inner ward I turned to look back at her. She was watching me too and the letter was still in her hand.

13

Lizzie: Present Day

“This is very kind of you,” Johnny Robsart said. “I’m so sorry to trouble you.” He sounded like a very well brought-up schoolboy, Lizzie thought, but he looked like a spectre, translucently pale, shivering, bruised blue shadows beneath his eyes. “I do hope you don’t mind that I called,” he added. “Millie had your number on her phone and I realise it was probably a private one but I really needed to talk to you.”

Lizzie nodded. She took his elbow and gently guided him through to her kitchen. He felt thin, and brittle; though he was tall he had no bulk. His wrists stuck out from the ends of his sleeves as though he was growing out of his clothes as soon as he put them on. He was half man, half frightened boy and Lizzie, who had never in her life felt maternal before, wanted to give him a hug and a square meal.