“Listen,” Ned says urgently. “I have my passport from Elizabeth to travel to France.” He shows me her signature, the affected “E” and all the scrolling lines. “But I will not go if you are with child. If there is any chance that you are carrying our baby, I will stay, and we will tell the queen together.”

My dread of facing Elizabeth without Janey’s support is almost worse than my dread of Ned going away. “I don’t know,” I say, distracted by the cuckoo that is calling so close that it must be almost overhead, hidden in the branches. “I don’t think so. I can’t be sure. I think I had a course, just after Janey’s...” I can’t say the word “funeral.”

Ned squeezes my hand. “I won’t go unless you allow it,” he says.

“I suppose you want to go,” I say irritably. “Paris and Rheims and everywhere.”

“Of course I’d like to see these cities, and attend the new French king’s coronation. I want to learn about the world,” he says fairly. “And it would do us no harm for Cecil to find me reliable. Of course it is a great opportunity for me. But I won’t go if you are with child. I won’t leave you. I promised. I am yours, Katherine, I am yours till death.”

I shake my head. I am so afraid of confessing to Elizabeth, and certain that Janey was wrong and there is no baby. I feel that I have lost everything in this sorrowful spring: my best friend, Janey, and the chance of her brother’s baby, and now he is going away too. “It’s gone. I don’t think it was ever there,” I tell him.

“Can a woman not tell such a thing?”

“I don’t know what I am supposed to feel!” I exclaim. “All I feel is frightened and terribly sad about Janey, and I don’t dare to face Elizabeth. But I don’t feel anything else. I am no fatter or anything.”

He looks at me as if I should know such mysteries, as if every girl in the world knows it by nature, and I am very silly that I do not.

“How am I supposed to know?” I demand. “If everyone knew we were married, I could ask your mother or some midwives. It’s not my fault.”

“Of course it’s not your fault,” he says quickly. “Nor mine. It would just be so much better if we knew for sure. If you knew for sure.”

The cuckoo calls directly over our heads and I look up and see a flash of beautifully barred breast feathers.

“Are you even listening to me at all?” he demands hotly.