I fling myself away from the two of them and run to the ladies’ rooms, dropping a curtsey to the throne as I go. I will have to say I am ill and that is why I left without permission. I will have to go to bed. I long to go to my bed and cry all day.

* * *

My little sister, Mary, tells everyone that I am sick from eating undercooked apples and that the best thing for me is to be left alone. She comes to me in my private room off the ladies’ chambers, and behind her comes a servant with a plate of meat from the kitchen and some bread from the bakery.

“I can’t eat,” I say, raising my head from the pillow.

“I know,” she says. “This is all for me. But you can have a little if you want.”

She hauls herself up into a chair beside the bed and passes me a glass of wine and water. “Have you broken with Ned?” she asks. “He’s going round court with a face like a pig’s bottom.”

“Don’t be so vulgar.” I take a sip. “Mother would have smacked you.”

“And our sister, Jane, would have closed her eyes and prayed for patience.” Mary chuckles. “But it’s how he looks. I cannot lie.” She breaks off a little piece of manchet bread and passes it to me. I nibble on it.

“He is courting Frances Mewtas,” I say. “I know he is. I think my heart is broken.”

Mary raises her perfectly arched eyebrows. “You couldn’t have married him anyway,” she says. “You’d never have got permission. And there’s terrible news from Oxford. It turns out that Lady Dudley was not sick at all. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. And worse than that, there’s to be an inquest!”

“She’s not sick? But everyone said... And the queen said...”

“Fell downstairs and broke her neck,” Mary repeats.

“My God! But what can an inquest do?”

“It can discover what happened. Because people are saying that she did not fall down the stairs but someone pushed her!” Mary says through a mouthful of bread and meat. “And so Sir Robert has to withdraw from court, and go into mourning on his own. He’s going to his house at Kew, and Elizabeth is prowling round her rooms like a hungry wolf. She can’t go to see him; she can’t even write to him. He’s suspected of murder; she can’t be connected. She doesn’t go out and has almost imprisoned herself in her rooms. The court dines without her. Nobody knows what to do. And he—he is halfway to ruin. Everyone is saying that he murdered his wife to marry Elizabeth, and some people are saying that she knew.”