“Yes, but that’s not why he’s done it,” I exclaim. “If he cared so much to protect the queen, he would have rushed the bill through last year when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and commanded every Papist criminal in the country to murder her. No. This is just to attack the Queen of Scots at the very moment when we have a complete agreement. This is to drive her into rebellion. And I will have to be the one to tell her what he has done. It was to be an act of absolute faith between the two queens, and I am the one who has to tell her that she has been cheated of her inheritance.”

“You can tell her that her plotting has all been for nothing then.” There is a vindictive pleasure lilting in my wife’s voice. “Whatever she has written to Norfolk or to her foreign friends, if she is debarred from the throne she can promise what she likes but they will know her to be a liar without friends in England.”

“She is no liar. She is the heir,” I say stubbornly. “Whatever anyone says, whatever Cecil says in Parliament. She has Tudor blood, she is nearest to the throne, whether they like it or no. She is the next heir to England. What else do we say? That we pick and choose the next king or queen depending on our preference? Are monarchs not chosen by God? Are they not descended one from another? Besides, all the kings of England before this one have been Papist. Is the religion of the fathers of the kings of England now to be an obstacle to their being king? Has God changed? Has the king changed? Has the past changed too? Has Cecil—I beg your pardon, Baron Burghley—has he the power to disinherit Richard I? Henry V?”

“Why should you be so upset?” she asks unpleasantly. “Has she promised you a dukedom as reward when she is Queen of England?”

I gasp at the insult on my own castle wall from my own wife. But this is how things are now. A land steward is a baron, a queen is disinherited by the House of Commons, and a wife can speak to her husband as if he were a fool.

“I serve the Queen of England,” I say tightly. “As you know, Bess. To my cost.”

“My cost too.”

“I serve the Queen of England and none other,” I say. “Even when she is ill advised. Woefully ill advised by your friend.”