“Yes, indeed, she has lost all her support,” Mary agrees sweetly. “There was not a town or village in the North that declared for her. They all wanted the true religion and to see me freed. Even you had to run before the army of the North, Bess. Tiens! How you labored with your wagons and how you fretted for your goods! Even you knew that there was not a town or village in the North that was loyal to Elizabeth. You had to whip up your horses and get through them as quick as you could while your silver cups fell off the back.”

There is a ripple of sycophantic laughter from my ladies at the thought of me struggling along with my Papist candlesticks. I bend my head over my sewing and grit my teeth.

“I watched you then,” she says more quietly, drawing her chair a little closer to me so that we can speak privately. “You were afraid in those days, on the road to Coventry.”

“No blame in that,” I say defensively. “Most people were afraid.”

“But you were not afraid for your own life.”

I shake my head. “I am no coward.”

“No, you are more than that. You are courageous. You were not afraid for your life, nor for the safety of your husband. You were not afraid of the battle either. But you were terrified of something. What was it?”

“The loss of my house,” I concede.

She cannot believe me. “What? Your house? With an army at your heels you were thinking of your house?”

I nod. “Always.”

“A house?” she repeats. “When we were in danger of our very lives?”

I give a half-embarrassed laugh. “Your Grace, you would not understand. You have been queen of so many palaces. You would not understand what it is like for me to win a small fortune and try to keep it.”

“You fear for your house before the safety of your husband?”

“I was born the daughter of a newly widowed woman,” I say. I doubt she would understand me even if I could spell it out for her. “On my father’s death she was left with nothing. I mean that: nothing. I was sent to the Brandon family, as companion and upper servant in their household. I saw then that a woman must have a husband and a house for her own safety.”

“You were surely in no danger?”