She nodded. ‘I understand exactly. I don’t know how to be a queen without a husband at my side. I have never known of a queen without a man to guide her. And yet I am so afraid of marrying . . .’ She paused. ‘I don’t think a man could ever understand the dread that a woman might feel at the thought of marriage. Especially a woman like me, not a young woman, not a woman given to the pleasures of the flesh, not a woman who is even very desirable . . .’ She put a hand out to prevent me from contradicting her. ‘I know it, Hannah, you needn’t flatter me.

‘And worse than all of these things, I am not a woman who finds it easy to trust men. I hate having to sit with the men of power. When they argue in council, my heart thumps in my chest, and I am afraid that my voice will shake when I have to speak.

‘And yet I despise men who are weak. When I look at my cousin Edward Courtenay that the Lord Chancellor would have me marry, I could laugh out loud at the thought of it. The boy is a puppy and a vain fool and I could never, never debase myself to lie under such a one as him.

‘But if one married a man who was accustomed to command . . .’ She paused. ‘What a terror it would be,’ she said quietly. ‘To put your heart in the keeping of a stranger! What a terror to promise to obey a man who might order you to do anything! And to promise to love a man till death . . .’ She broke off. ‘After all, men do not always consider themselves bound by such promises. And what happens then to a good wife?’

‘Did you think you would live and die a virgin?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘When I was a princess I was betrothed over and over again. But when my father denied me and called me his bastard, I knew that there would be no offers of marriage. I set away all thoughts of it then, and all thoughts of my own children too.’

‘Your father denied you?’

‘Yes,’ the queen said shortly. ‘They made me swear on the Bible to my own bastardy.’ Her voice shook, she drew a breath. ‘No prince in Europe would have married me after that. To tell you the truth, I was so ashamed I would not have wanted a husband. I could not have looked an honourable man in the face. And when my father died and my brother became king, I thought I could be like a dowager, like a favourite old godmother, his older sister who might advise him, and I thought he would have children that I might care for. But now everything has changed and I am queen, and even though I am queen I find I still cannot make my own choices.’ She paused. ‘They have offered me Philip of Spain, you know.’