She steps lightly down the stone stairs in her little red leather riding boots and comes to me confidently, holding out her hand in greeting. Always before, I have kissed her hand and lifted her into the saddle without thinking about it, as any courtier would do for his queen. But today I feel suddenly clumsy, my feet seem too big, I am afraid the horse will move away as I lift her, I even think I may hold her too tightly or awkwardly. She has such a tiny waist, she is no weight at all, but she is tall, the top of her head comes to my face. I can smell the light perfume of her hair under her golden velvet bonnet. For no reason I feel I am growing hot, blushing like a boy.

She looks at me attentively. “Shrewsbury?” she asks. She says it “Chowsbewwy?” and I hear myself laugh from sheer delight at the fact that still she cannot pronounce my name.

At once her face lights up with reflected laughter. “I still cannot say it?” she asks. “This is still not right?”

“Shrewsbury,” I say. “Shrewsbury.”

Her lips shape to make the name as if she were offering me a kiss. “Showsbewy,” she says and then she laughs. “I cannot say it. Shall I call you something else?”

“Call me Chowsbewwy,” I say. “You are the only person ever to call me that.”

She stands before me and I cup my hands for her booted foot. She takes a grip of the horse’s mane, and I lift her, easily, into the saddle. She rides unlike any woman I have ever known before: French-style, astride. When my Bess first saw it, and the manilla pantaloons she wears under her riding habit, my wife swore that there would be a riot if she went out like that. It is so indecent.

“The Queen of France herself, Catherine de Medici, rides like this, and every princess of France. Are you telling me that she and all of us are wrong?” Queen Mary demanded, and Bess blushed scarlet to her ears and begged pardon and said that she was sorry but it was odd to English eyes, and would the queen not ride pillion, behind a groom, if she did not want to go sidesaddle?

“This way, I can ride as fast as a man,” Queen Mary said, and that was the end to it, despite Bess’s murmur that it was no advantage to us if she could outride every one of her guards.

From that day she has been riding on her own saddle, astride like a boy, with her gown sweeping down on either side of the horse. She rides, as she warned Bess, as fast as a man, and some days it is all I can do to keep up with her.