“She is sorely in need of friends,” I say steadily. “But all our trust is in Her Majesty.”

He waves to the court that has gathered to see him leave. He bows as gracefully as a dancer and turns and leaps from the ground into the saddle. His horse curvets; he holds it on a hard rein and sits well as it rears. He doffs his hat and kisses his hand to Elizabeth, and she smiles graciously on him. He really does look as handsome as a mounted angel. I wonder how long after he is out of sight she will regret letting him go.

* * *

Less than a month is the answer! I could laugh if I were not standing, straight as a poker, tall as a broadsword, as she rages up and down her room. Sir William Maitland, the Scots queen’s advisor, arrives from Edinburgh, carrying the extraordinary request from Queen Mary to marry Elizabeth’s noble subject—Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Elizabeth goes white with anger and retreats to her privy chamber. Cecil and Dudley go in and out like anxious jacks-in-the-box. In: to listen to Elizabeth shouting in rage that Henry Stuart is false as his mother, Margaret Douglas, as his father, Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, and that Mary is a fool and he will break her heart and ruin her chance of ever being named as heir to England. Out: to meet with the lords of the Privy Council and see if there is any legal contrivance, any forbidden relationship, any device by which they can refuse permission for the marriage or—if it has already taken place—declare it void.

It is as good as a play for me—a savagely comical play—to see how these great men set to work to destroy a woman’s innocent desire. They think of nothing but the advantage of their own course, the victory of their own policy. They think nothing of a woman in love, a young woman, without advisors, a lonely young woman who has a handsome young man thrown at her in a court riven with anger, and has nowhere else to turn.

“It’s not even as if he were a very admirable young man,” I say to Thomas Keyes. It is a cold afternoon, and we are seated either side of the fire in his private room, over the watergate. One of his officers is on duty at the main gate. The winding mechanism for the portcullis of the watergate is on the other side of the wall and nobody can raise it without Thomas’s permission. He has some wine in a pot and, as I watch, he gently takes the poker from the red-hot embers and seethes it in the wine. The hiss of the boiling liquid and the scent of mulled wine fills the room. He pours me a cup and takes one for himself.