Places that I find hidden and treasonous letters to the Queen of Scots:

1. Under a stone in the garden, brought to me by the gardener’s lad who is too simple to understand that the shilling stuck on the outside of the letter was payment to take it in secret to her.

2. Baked inside special Christmas bread for her from my own pastry maker.

3. Sewn inside a gown of silk as a gift from friends in Paris.

4. Pasted into the leaves of a book from a spy in the Spanish Netherlands.

5. Folded into a bolt of damask from Edinburgh.

6. Flown in by one of her own homing pigeons from God knows where, but I am especially worried by this, for the bird was not spent from a long flight: whoever sent it out must be close at hand.

7. Tucked into her saddle where I find it as I lift her up to go riding. She laughed, as if it does not matter.

8. In the collar of her lapdog. These two last must be men in my household acting as couriers for her friends. The homing bird she trained herself, pretending to me that she wanted tame doves. I gave them to her myself, more fool I.

“This must stop,” I tell her. I try to sound stern but she has been washing her dog and she has a linen apron over her gown, her headdress is laid aside, and her hair is falling down from its pins. She is as beautiful as a laundry maid in a fairy story and she is laughing at the dog splashing in the bathwater and wriggling as she tries to hold him.

“Chowsbewwy!” she exclaims with pleasure at seeing me. “Here, Mary, take little Pêche, he is too naughty, and too wet.”

With a lunge the little dog struggles to be free and shakes himself vigorously, drenching us all. The queen laughs. “Take him! Take him! Vite! Vite! And get him dry!”

I regain my solemn expression. “I daresay you would not like it if I took him away from you for good.”

“Not at all,” she replies. “But why would you dream of doing such a cruel thing? How has Pêche offended you?”

“Or if I refused to give you books, or new material for a gown, or did not let you walk in the garden?”

She rises to her feet and strips off her linen apron, a gesture so domestic and ordinary that I almost catch her hand and kiss it as if we were newlyweds in our own little house. “My lord, are you offended with me for something?” she asks sweetly. “Why do you threaten me so? Is something wrong? Has Bess complained of me?”

I shake my head. “It is your letters,” I say. “You must authorize men to write to you. I find letters everywhere. The guards bring me one practically every day.”