Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf, follows them and makes a comical little face at me, as if to ask me where I have been. I completely ignore her. She has no right to express any curiosity about me. I don’t have to answer to her, and if she prompts an inquiry from the queen, then I will find her afterwards and tell her to mind her own tiny business.

“Lady Mary,” Elizabeth says with an unpleasant tone. I cannot think what I have done to offend her, but she is clearly displeased. “Are you honoring me with your attendance at my dressing for dinner tonight?”

I can feel Robert Dudley’s reassuring smile rather than see it. I dare not look directly anywhere but into Elizabeth’s sparkling dark eyes. “Of course, Your Majesty,” I say meekly. “And the honor is mine.”

“Remember it then,” she says nastily, and sweeps past me. I curtsey, and when I raise my head, I catch a quick sympathetic smile from Robert Dudley and a cheeky wink from Thomasina. He follows in the queen’s wake. She lingers.

“Someone’s writing a book about your sister,” she informs me. “That’s why she’s so furious with you. She’s just heard about it. Apparently, it’s going to say that your sister will be the next Queen of England. You will be sister to the queen and aunt to the next king. Fancy a dwarf just like me so close to the throne.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I say coldly.

“Oh, do you think you will be taller with a great crown on your sister’s head?” she asks, smiling. “Will her elevation make you grow? Will you rise up higher if she makes you a duchess?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I turn away, but she catches at the skirt of my gown in her little square-palmed hand, so like my own.

“What is it?” I say crossly. “Let me go. D’you think we’re going to brawl in the yard like page boys?”

“There are some that would pay good money to see it,” she says cheerfully. “But I have always made my living as a miniature lady, never as a merry dwarf.”

“And I have never made my living at all,” I say grandly. “And my height has nothing to do with anything. I’ll thank you to let go of my gown.”

She lets me go, but her impertinent smile never falters. “There is a book indeed, Lady Mary,” she says shortly. “The scholars are putting it together, piece by piece. A page stolen from the chancery to show that your family was named as heir by Henry VIII, evidence of marriage to show that your line is legitimate, proof that all three of you, Lady Jane, Lady Katherine, and you, are English-born, Protestant, and royal.”

“Don’t you speak of Jane,” I say warningly.