He steps forwards and gives me a glass of small ale. ‘Who is Elizabeth?’ he asks.

‘My daughter. I don’t know why I was thinking of her.’

‘She has a ring shaped like a crown?’

‘In my vision she had the ring that signified the king. She put it on her own finger.’

He smiles gently. ‘These are mysteries.’

‘There is no mystery about the vision: she had the ring that was the crown of England, and she smiled and put it on her finger.’

He drops the curtain across the mirror. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he asks.

‘My daughter is to be close to the crown,’ I say. I am puzzling through the scrying. ‘How could such a thing be? She is married to Sir John Grey, they have a son, and another baby on the way. How can she put the crown of England on her finger?’

‘It is not clear to me,’ he says. ‘I will think on it, and perhaps I will ask you to come again.’

‘How could Elizabeth have a ring like a crown on her finger?’

‘Sometimes our visions come darkly. We don’t know what we see. This one is very unclear. It is a mystery. I will pray on it.’

I nod. When a man wants a mystery it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

‘Will you come here and pour this liquid into a mould?’ he asks me.

I follow him into the first room and he takes a flask from the wall, shakes it gently and then hands it to me. ‘Hold it.’ I cup the bowl in my hands and at once I feel it grow warm under the heat of my fingers.

‘Now pour it,’ he says, and gestures to the moulds that are on his table.

Carefully, I fill each one with the silvery liquid and then pass the flask back to him.

‘Some processes call for the touch of a woman,’ he says quietly. ‘Some of the greatest alchemy has been done by a husband and wife, working together.’ He gestures to the bowl of warm water that is over the charcoal stove. ‘This method was invented by a woman and named for her.’

‘I have no skills,’ I say, denying my own abilities. ‘And when I have visions they are sent by God and are unclear to me.’

He takes my hand and tucks it under his arm as he leads the way to the door. ‘I understand. I will send for you only if I cannot manage to work for the queen without you. And you are right to hide your light. This is a world that does not understand a skilled woman, it is a world that fears the craft. We all have to do our work in secret, even now, when the kingdom needs our guidance so much.’

‘The king will not get better,’ I say suddenly, as if the truth is forced out of me.