Mr Dee glanced at the window as if he feared eavesdroppers on the very sill outside. ‘These are not good times for me to serve a suspect princess and a man in the Tower for treason, and three others whose names I may already know, whose plans I may already doubt.’

I gave him a steady look. ‘As you wish, sir.’

‘And you could be more safely employed, young woman,’ he said. ‘What is he thinking of, exposing you to such danger?’

‘I am his to command,’ I said firmly. ‘I have given my word.’

‘He should release you,’ he said gently. ‘He cannot command anything from the Tower.’

‘He has released me. I am to see him only once more,’ I said. ‘When I go back and tell him what you have foreseen for England.’

‘Shall we look in the mirror and see now?’ he asked.

I hesitated. I was afraid of the dark mirror and the darkened room, afraid of the things that might come through the darkness to haunt us. ‘Mr Dee, last time I did not have a true seeing,’ I confessed awkwardly.

‘When you said the date of the death of the king?’

I nodded.

‘When you predicted that the next queen would be Jane?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your answers were true,’ he observed.

‘They were nothing more than guesses,’ I said. ‘I plucked them from the air. I am sorry.’

He smiled. ‘Then just do that again,’ he said. ‘Just guess for me. Just guess for Lord Robert. Since he asks it?’

I was caught and I knew it. ‘Very well.’

‘We’ll do it now,’ he said. ‘Sit down, close your eyes, try to think of nothing. I will get the room ready for you.’

I did as he told me and sat on a stool. I could hear him moving quietly in the next room, the swish of a closing curtain, and the little spitting noise of flame as he carried a taper from a fire to light the candles. Then he said quietly: ‘It is ready. Come, and may the good angels guide us.’

He took my hand and led me into a small box room. The same mirror we had used before was leaning against a wall, a table before it supported a wax tablet printed with strange signs. A candle was burning before the mirror and he had put another opposite, so that they seemed like innumerable candles disappearing into infinite distance, beyond the world, beyond the sun and the moon and the planets as he had showed them to me on his swinging circular model; not all the way to heaven but into absolute darkness where finally there would be more darkness than candle-flame and it would be nothing but dark.

I drew a long breath to ward off my fear and seated myself before the mirror. I heard his muttered prayer and I repeated: ‘Amen’. Then I gazed into the darkness of the mirror.

I could hear myself speaking but I could hardly make out the words. I could hear the scratching of his pen as he wrote down what I was saying. I could hear myself reciting a string of numbers, and then strange words, like a wild poetry which had a rhythm and a beauty of its own; but no meaning that I could tell. Then I heard my voice say very clearly in English: ‘There will be a child, but no child. There will be a king but no king. There will be a virgin queen all-forgotten. There will be a queen but no virgin.’