She hears nothing of this. “A hostage? Will she keep him in the Tower like the poor little princes? Will he never come out at all? Will he disappear as they did? Does she mean to kill him?”

Her voice breaks on the thought of it and I cannot bear her distress. I rise from my seat at the table and I go to look out of the window. In our rooms across the courtyard I can see Bess walking down the gallery, accounts books tucked under her arm. She feels a long way away from me now, her worries about rents and our costs are so trivial compared to the unfolding tragedy of the Scots queen. Bess has always been prosaic, but now I have the very heart of poetry beating wildly in my own house.

I turn back to the queen. She is sitting quite still with her hand shading her eyes. “Forgive me,” she says. “Forgive my emotion. You must wish you had a cold-hearted queen to deal with, like your own. And forgive my stupidity. I had not read it properly. I thought that they meant only to supervise James’s education, to make him a good heir to the English throne. I did not realize that they want to take him from me altogether. I thought we were talking about a treaty—not about my destruction. Not about the theft of my child. Not about his kidnap.”

I feel too big and too awkward for the room. Gently, I stand behind her and put my hand on her shoulder, and with a sigh she leans back so that her head rests against my body. That little gesture, and the warmth of her head on my belly, fill me with tenderness, and an inevitable rising desire. I have to step away from her, my heart pounding.

“I was parted from my mother when I was just a little girl,” she says sadly. “I know what it is to be homesick and to miss one’s mother. I wouldn’t do that to my son, not for the throne of France, let alone Scotland.”

“He would be well cared for.”