‘Nobody could help but like him,’ I say. ‘He is handsome, charming and one of the greatest men in England. But that doesn’t mean that the queen should feel anything for him but cousinly affection.’

‘You’re too late to tell me,’ she says, her voice silky and warm. ‘It is too late for me. It’s not cousinly affection. It is far beyond that. Jacquetta, for the first time in my life I feel as if I am alive. For the first time in my life I feel as if I am a woman. I feel beautiful. I feel desired. I cannot resist this.’

‘I told you before,’ I remind her. ‘I warned you.’

Again, she lifts her beautiful shoulders. ‘Ah, Jacquetta. You know as well as I do what it is to be in love. Would you have stopped if someone had warned you?’

I don’t answer her. ‘You will have to send him away from court,’ I say flatly. ‘You will have to avoid him, perhaps for months. This is a disaster.’

‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘The king would never allow him to go. He won’t let him out of his sight. And I would just die if I did not see him, Jacquetta. You don’t know. He is my only companion, he is my chevalier, he is my champion: the queen’s champion.’

‘This is not Camelot,’ I warn her grimly. ‘These are not the times of the troubadours. People will think badly of you if they see you so much as smile at him, they will accuse him of being your favourite, or worse. What you are saying here is enough to have you put aside and sent to a nunnery. And if anyone heard you say it: it would be the end of him. Already he is hated and envied for being the favourite of the king. If one word gets out to the people that you favour him, they will say the most terrible things. You are the queen, your reputation is like Venetian glass: precious and fragile and rare. You have to take care. You are not a private lady, you cannot have private feelings.’

‘I will take care,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I swear I will take care.’ It is as if she is bartering for the right to be with him, and that she would offer anything for that right. ‘If I take care, if I don’t smile on him or ride too close to him, or dance with him too often, I can still see him. Can’t I? Everyone will think he is with us all the time at the king’s command, nobody need know that he makes me so happy, that it makes my life worth living, just to be with him.’

I know I should tell her that she should never be alone with him at all, but her face is too imploring. She is lonely, and she is young, and it is miserable to be a young woman in a great court when nobody really cares for you. I know that. I know what it is like to have a husband who hardly sees you, but that there is one young man who can’t take his eyes from you. I know what it is like to burn up in a cold bed.