“It is spun gold,” she says. “Real gold thread. That is why it glitters so. Do you want to sew with it?”

“If you wish,” I say, as if I don’t much mind.

“Good!” she says, and she beams as if she is genuinely delighted that we will work together. “You will start at that end and I shall start at this and bit by bit we shall come closer and closer together.”

I smile in reply; it is impossible not to warm to her.

“And at the end we shall meet in the middle, head to head and the greatest of friends,” she predicts.

I draw up my chair and the fine fabric loops from her lap to mine. “Now,” she says quietly, when we are settled with our gold thread. “Do tell me all about my cousin the queen. Have you been much to her court?”

Indeed, I have. I don’t boast but I let her know that I have been a senior lady-in-waiting at the queen’s court, at her side from the earliest days of her reign, her friend when she was nothing more than a princess, friends with her friends, loyal informant to her advisor.

“Oh, so you must know all her secrets,” she says. “Tell me all about her. And tell me about Robert Dudley. Was she really so desperately in love with him as they all said?”

I hesitate at that. But she leans forward to engage me. “Is he still so very handsome?” she whispers. “She offered him to me, you know, in marriage, when I first came to Scotland. But I knew she would never part with him. She is lucky to have such a loyal lover. It is a rare man who can love a queen. He has devoted his life to her, has he not?”

“Forever,” I say. “From the moment she came to the throne and formed her court. He came to her then and he has never left. They have been hand in glove for so long that they finish each other’s sentences, and they have a hundred secret jokes, and sometimes you see her just glance towards him, and he knows exactly what she is thinking.”

“Then why does she not marry him, since he is free?” she asks. “She made him an earl so that she could propose him for me. If he was good enough for me he must be more than good enough to marry her.”

I shrug. “The scandal...,” I say very quietly. “After his wife’s death. The scandal has never gone away.”

“Can she not defy the scandal? A queen of courage can live down a scandal.”

“Not in England,” I say, thinking. And probably not in Scotland either. “A queen’s reputation is her crown; if she loses one she loses the other. And Cecil is against him,” I add.

She widens her eyes. “Cecil commands her in even this?”