“Buried in a coffin as big as a child’s!” she says jeeringly, and I turn on my heel and stride away, but I can hear her pattering after me, and she dodges around me and blocks my way.

“You want to know the rest of this,” she tells me. “Listen, for your own good. The scholars’ reports from France and Spain all name your sister Katherine as the rightful heir. The queen is furious. If it was you commissioned the report, you’d do well to warn your clerks to make themselves scarce. You could tell your uncle to take a trip to France for his health. You’d better keep your head down and stop running off to kiss the sergeant porter.”

I bite off a gasp of shock.

“I see a lot,” she adds quickly. “You know how. Nobody pays any attention to us.”

“And why would you warn me?” I demand. “When you live in her shadow?”

“Because we’re both dwarfs,” she says bluntly. “We are both small women in a very big and dangerous world. We have a sisterhood of shortness, even if you want to deny it. So I say to you—don’t offend her. She’s furious enough with your family as it is.”

She gives me a cheeky little nod of the head, as if to drive the point home, and then she turns and skips across the yard, looking like a little girl running after a teacher, and I see the door to Elizabeth’s privy stair bang behind her.

WINDSOR CASTLE,

SPRING 1564

I serve Elizabeth all through the bitingly cold spring with meticulous courtesy, and though she snaps her fingers at me for her fan, and complains that I scratch her neck when I tie her sapphire necklace, she can find nothing else to say against me.