We go past the stones as if they were nothing: the teeth of a skull on an old battlefield. We ignore fallen statues, a gold arrow in the grass, a piece of stone carved like an ivy branch, the top of a sarcophagus. Mary Sidney looks to neither right nor left, and nor do I as we walk through the rubble of the old faith, up a small flight of steps, through the big doors, and inward and inward until we are in a long gallery, gloomy with dark wooden paneling, perhaps the old room of the abbess when she sat among her devout ladies. Now it is echoey and empty, there are cold embers in the huge stone grate, and the only light comes from a wrought candelabra with bobbing candle flames placed beside a heavy chair. There are bleached panels on the wooden walls where the pictures of holy scenes have been taken away, rightly so, for Cursed be he, that maketh any carved idol or molten image, an abomination of the Lord; but it makes a gloomy room look wretched.

I look at Mary and say: “Where is everyone? Why have we come here?”

“I don’t know,” she says; but now I am certain she is lying.

She goes to the door and opens it to listen. From the distant kitchen we can hear the clatter of pans and the sound of voices, but the great rooms that open off the huge hall are silent. Mary closes the door and looks at me, as if wondering what she should do with me. I wrap my cloak tighter round my thin frame and look back at her.

“Your eyes are huge,” she says irrelevantly. “Don’t be so frightened. You have to be brave.”

“I’m not frightened,” I lie.

“You look like a doe at bay.”

My faith should support me as strongly now as it does when I am safe in my bed at Bradgate. I know that God is with me. “O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me,” I say quietly.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mary says impatiently. “You’ve just come for dinner with your father-in-law!” She drags a stool to the massive fireplace. After a moment’s hesitation I copy her and we sit like a pair of old gossips on either side, and she throws on some kindling and a little log. It gives out no heat but a flickering light that drives the dark shadows to the corners.

“Is it about the king?” I whisper.

“Yes,” she says.

“Has he named me as queen?”

She compresses her lips as if to keep the words in her mouth.

“Will it be... soon?”