“Did you speak to the Northern lords of Norfolk’s marriage to the Queen of Scots?” she demands, as passionately as a wife would force a husband to confess to a secret lover. “When they visited that night? Did you agree with them that it would be a very good thing for Norfolk, and for yourselves, and a bad thing for Cecil? Did you say it would be good for her to take her throne in Scotland with him as her husband? Did you agree that the queen did not know of it? Did you say anything like that?”

“Yes,” I admit, as reluctantly as an unfaithful husband. “Yes, I think I may have done.”

She throws down the napkin to the floor with the thread and the needle. I have never seen her careless with her work before. “Then you have destroyed us,” she says. “Cecil does not have to make it all one plot. Indeed, it is all different strands of the same plot. You passed her letters from Norfolk, you let her meet with the Northern lords, you spoke with them about the marriage, and you agreed to plot with them against the queen’s advisor and against his policy.”

“What should I have done other?” I shout at her in my own fear. “I am for England! Old England, as it was. My country, my old country! I don’t want Cecil’s England, I want the England of my father! What else should I have done but bring him down?”

The face she turns on me is like stone, if stone could be bitter. “You should have kept me and my fortune safe,” she says, her voice quavering. “I came to you with a good fortune, a great fortune, and it was yours by marriage, all yours. A wife can own nothing in her own name. A wife has to trust her husband with her wealth. I trusted you with mine. I trusted you to keep it safe. When we married, all my properties became yours; all you give me is a wife’s allowance. I trusted you with my wealth, with my houses, with my lands, with my businesses. I gave them to you to keep them safe for me and my children. That is all I asked of you. To keep me and my fortune safe. I am a self-made woman. You promised that you would keep my fortune safe.”

“You shall have it all back under your own command,” I swear. I am furious with her, still thinking of money at a time like this. “I shall free myself from this shadow on my name. I shall clear my name and the name of my house. And you shall have your own fortune back as your own again. You shall live apart in your own precious house and count your precious ha’pennies. And you shall be sorry, madam, that you and your great friend Cecil ever doubted me.”