‘They are not to open fire,’ the queen ruled.

‘Your Grace, for the love of God . . .’

She shook her head. ‘You want me to open fire on Southwark, a village that greeted me so kindly as queen? I will not fire on the people of London.’

‘The rebels are encamped within range now. We could open fire and destroy them in one cannonade.’

‘They will have to stay there until we can raise an army to drive them away.’

‘Your Grace, you have no army. There are no men who will fight for you.’

She was pale but she did not waver for a moment. ‘I have no army yet,’ she emphasised. ‘But I will raise one from the good men of London.’

Against her council’s advice, and with the enemy force growing stronger every day that they camped, unchallenged, on the south bank of the city, the queen put on her great gown of state and went to the Guildhall to meet the Mayor and the people. Jane Dormer, her other ladies and I went in her train, dressed as grandly as we could and looking confident, though we knew we were proceeding to disaster.

‘I don’t know why you are coming,’ one of the old men of the council said pointedly to me. ‘There are fools enough in her train already.’

‘But I am a holy fool, an innocent fool,’ I said pertly. ‘And there are few enough innocent here. You would not be one, I reckon.’

‘I am a fool to be here at all,’ he said sourly.

Of all of the queen’s council and certainly of all of her ladies in waiting, only Jane and I had any hopes of getting out of London alive; but Jane and I had seen her at Framlingham, and we knew that this was a queen to back against all odds. We saw the sharpness in her dark eyes and the pride in her carriage. We had seen her put her crown on her small dark head and smile at herself in the looking glass. We had seen a queen, not filled with fear of an unbeatable enemy, but playing for her life as if it were a game of quoits. She was at her very best when she and her God stood against disaster; with an enemy at the very gates of London you would want no other queen.

But despite all this, I was afraid. I had seen men and women put to violent death, I had smelled the smoke from the burnings of heretics. I knew, as few of her ladies knew, what death meant.

‘Are you coming with me, Hannah?’ she asked pleasantly as she mounted the steps to the Guildhall.

‘Oh yes, Your Grace,’ I said through cold lips.

They had set up a throne for her in the Guildhall and half of London came from sheer curiosity, crowding to hear the queen argue for her life. When she stood, a small figure under the weighty golden crown, draped in the heavy robes of state, I thought for a moment that she would not be able to convince them to keep their faith with her. She looked too frail, she looked too much like a woman who would indeed be ruled by her husband. She looked like a woman you could not trust.