Life at court was expensive, especially in the retinue of Philip of Spain. Robert’s brother had made over to him an estate in Hales Owen, somewhere in Worcestershire, in order to give him an income, but one small plot of land was nothing to a man who had once held so many manors. We never went there though Robert ran it dry.

“Ambrose has so much,” Robert grumbled one night, “and I so little. He could give me more and it would not harm him.”

I could have told him that more would never be enough for him but I held my peace. Robert did not tell me things in order to gain my opinion. He had no interest in my views. Something had broken between us that day in the Tower of London, a trust, a loyalty. Or perhaps it had only ever existed in my imagination or my dreams. I did not know. What I did know was that whatever emotion held Robert and I together, it was a shallow thing, a shadow of the feeling he had for the Lady Elizabeth. We were wed and so my fortunes were tied to his but there was nothing else to bind us. I mourned the love I believed I had once had for him now it was gone.

On that spring morning, Robert, King Philip, a number of the other Spanish gentlemen and a few of the English were down in the tiltyard, practising the joust. With Arthur’s letter clutched to my chest I made my way down there, pushing through the crowds of pages and esquires, the throng who would turn out to see the King and his courtiers at play, hoping for a word or a favour. There were few women there. I hated the coarseness of the tiltyard, the rough masculinity. It was in the air, the pounding of the horses’ hooves, the smell of hay and sweat and dung. It was in the shouts of the men. It felt dangerous.

Outside the sunlight blinded me and I realised that it was because my eyes were full of tears. There was a pressure in my chest with the weight of my grief. It was so long since I had seen my mother and although we had written frequently the sudden realisation that I would never see her again hit me hard. My half-siblings and I were scattered, Arthur in Norfolk, John at college in Oxford and Anna in Cambridgeshire where her husband was rebuilding a grand house in place of the one that Robert had destroyed. The Queen had compensated them well for their loyalty to her and although I had seen both Anna and Antony in London when he came to sit in the parliament, we were not reconciled. I knew she would be unlikely to write to me to share our grief over Mother’s death and that hurt to my soul.

A raucous cheer went around the tiltyard when some of the men saw me. Robert had just finished a bout against Philip himself, which he had cleverly let Philip win, but not too easily. He slid down from the horse, patted its sweating neck, and strode across to where I was standing. He was frowning and for one horrible moment I thought he was about to upbraid me for seeking him out, here in front of all the men. But I had misread him. Instead he swept me up into his arms, the letter crumpled between us, and kissed me hard. I stiffened to pull away but he was already releasing me, his point made, his virility emphasised by the joust and the embrace of a pretty girl. I suppose I should have been glad that the pretty girl had been me.