“You don’t disturb me,” I say. “What is it?”

“It is to say I am sorry, but I cannot see how we can have open house this Christmastide,” she says in a rush. “We cannot feed all the tenant farmers and their families, not as well as all the servants. Not this year.”

“There is no money?”

She nods. “There is no money.”

I try to laugh but it sounds all wrong. “How much can it cost? Surely we have coin and plate in the treasure room enough for a dinner and ale for our own people?”

“Not for months and months.”

“I suppose you have tried to borrow?”

“I have borrowed all that I can, locally. I have already mortgaged land. They don’t accept it at full value anymore; they are starting to doubt our ability to repay. If nothing improves, we will have to go to the London goldsmiths and offer them plate.”

I wince. “Not my family goods,” I protest, thinking of my crested plates being melted down as scrap. Thinking of the goldsmiths, weighing my silverware, and seeing my family crest, and laughing that I have come to this.

“No, of course not. We will sell my things first,” she says levelly.

“I am sorry for this,” I say. “You had better tell your steward to tell your tenants that they cannot come for their dinner this year. Perhaps next.”

“They will all know why,” she warns me. “They will know we are struggling.”

“I imagine everyone knows,” I say drily. “Since I write to the queen once a month and beg her to pay her debts to me, and the letter is read in public to her. The whole court knows. All of London knows. Everyone knows we are on the brink of ruin. No one will offer us credit.”

She nods.

“I will put this right,” I say earnestly. “If you have to sell your plate, I will get it back for you. I will find a way, Bess. You will not be the loser for marrying me.”

She bows her head and bites her lip so she does not blurt out the reproach that is on her tongue. I know she is already the loser for marrying me. She is thinking of her husbands who carefully amassed their fortunes for her. Men I have sneered at as upstarts, with no family to speak of. She gained from marrying them: they founded a fortune. But I have squandered it. I have lost her fortune. And now I think I have lost my pride.

“Will you go to London this season?” she asks me.

“Norfolk’s trial is delayed until after Christmas,” I say. “Though I doubt they will be very merry at court, with this ghost at their feast. I shall have to serve at his trial. I’ll go down to London then, after twelfth night, and when I see Her Majesty, I will speak again about her debt to us.”