“You damned traitor, you damned treasonous, wicked traitor!” he hollers as he stumbles into the room and sees the knotted sheets on the floor and the open window. “She should take your head off; she should take your head off without trial.”

I stand like a queen and say nothing.

“Sir Ralph...,” Bess protests. “This is a queen.”

“I could damned well kill you myself!” he shouts. “If I threw you out of the window now I could say that the rope broke and you fell.”

“Do it,” I spit.

He bellows in his rage and Mary dives between us and John moves closer, fearing this brute will lunge at me in his temper. But it is Bess who prevents him, tightening her grip on his arm. “Sir Ralph,” she says quietly, “you cannot. Everyone would know. The queen would have you tried for murder.”

“The queen would thank God for me!” he snaps.

She shakes her head. “She would not. She would never forgive you. She does not want her cousin dead; she has spent three years trying to find a way to restore her to her throne.”

“And look at the thanks she gets! Look at the love which is returned her!”

“Even so,” she says steadily, “she does not want her death.”

“I would give it her as a gift.”

“She does not want her death on her conscience,” Bess says, more precisely. “She could not bear it. She does not wish it. She will never order it. A queen’s life is sacred.”

I feel icy inside. I don’t even admire Bess for defending me. I know she is defending her own house and her own reputation. She doesn’t want to go down in history as the hostess who killed a royal guest. Mary Seton slips her hand in mine.

“You will not touch her,” she says quietly to Sir Ralph. “You will have to kill me, you will have to kill us all first.”

“You are blessed in the loyalty of your friends,” Sir Ralph says bitterly. “Though you yourself are so disloyal.”

I say nothing.

“A traitor,” he says.

For the first time I look at him. I see him flush under the contempt of my gaze. “I am a queen,” I say. “I cannot be named as a traitor. There can be no such thing. I am of the blood royal; I cannot be accused of treason; I cannot be legally executed. I am untouchable. And I don’t answer to such as you.”

A vein throbs in his temple; his eyes goggle like those of a landed fish. “Her Majesty is a saint to endure you in her lands,” he growls.

“Her Majesty is a criminal to hold me against my consent,” I say. “Leave my room.”