“I’ll go and tell her to pack,” I say harshly. “We can do nothing else.”

Still he won’t leave it. He catches my hand. “You cannot let her go with Hastings,” he says. “Bess, she is our guest; she has sewed with you and eaten with us and hunted with me. She is innocent of any wrongdoing, you know that. She is our friend. We cannot betray her. If she rides out with him, I am certain that she will never get to his house alive.”

I think of my Chatsworth, and my fortune, and that steadies me. “God’s will be done,” I say. “And the queen has to be obeyed.”

“Bess! Have pity on her as a young woman! Have pity on her as a beautiful, friendless young woman.”

“God’s will be done,” I repeat, holding tight to the thought of my new front door and the portico with the plasterwork flowers, and the marble entrance hall, thinking of the new stable block that I want to live to build. I think of my children, well married, and well placed at court in good positions already, of the dynasties I will found, of the grandchildren I will have and the marriages I will make for them. I think of how far I have come and how far I hope to go. I would go to hell itself rather than lose my house. “Long live the queen.”

TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY

OCTOBER, 1569

The countess comes into my rooms, her face as kindly as flint. “Your Grace, you are going on a journey again. You will be glad to be away from here, I know.”

“Going where?” I ask. I can hear the fear in my voice; she will hear it too.

“Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Leicestershire,” she says shortly. “With the Earl of Huntingdon.”

“I prefer to stay here. I will stay here.”

“It must be as the queen commands.”

“Bess...”

“Your Grace, I can do nothing. I cannot deny my sovereign’s commands for you. You should not ask it of me. Nobody should ask it of me.”

“What will Huntingdon do with me?”

“Why, he will house you better than we can do here,” she says reassuringly, as if she is telling a fairy story to a child.

“Bess, write to Cecil for me, ask him if I can stay here. I ask you—no, I command you—to write to him.”

She keeps the smile on her face but it is strained. “Now, you don’t even like it here! You must have complained of the smell from the midden a dozen times. And the damp! Leicestershire will suit you far better. It is wonderful hunting country. Perhaps the queen will invite you to court.”

“Bess, I am afraid of Henry Hastings. He can wish me nothing but harm. Let me stay with you. I demand it. I command you. Write to Cecil and tell him I demand to stay with Lord Shrewsbury.”