‘Look at something?’

‘Look with your gift, with your inner eye.’

I hesitated. ‘Your Grace, I will try, but you know it is not at my command.’

‘No, but you have seen the future twice with me; once you spoke of my becoming queen and once you spoke to warn me of heartbreak. Now I want you to warn me again.’

‘Warn you against what?’ My voice was as low as hers. No-one in the room could have heard us over the crackle of the logs in the fireplace.

‘Against Elizabeth,’ she breathed.

For a moment I said nothing, my gaze on the red ember caverns under the big applewood logs.

‘Your Grace, there are wiser heads than mine to advise you,’ I said with difficulty. In the brightness of the fire I could almost see the flame of the princess’s hair, the dazzle of her confident smile.

‘None I trust more. None who comes with your gift.’

I hesitated. ‘Is she coming to court?’

Mary shook her head. ‘She won’t come. She says she is ill. She says she is near death with sickness, a swelling of the belly and of her limbs. She is too ill to get out of bed. Too ill to be moved. It is an old illness of hers, a real one, I believe. But it always comes on at certain times.’

‘Certain times?’

‘When she is very afraid,’ Mary said quietly, ‘and when she has been caught out. The first time she was sick like this was when they executed Thomas Seymour. Now I think she fears being accused of another plot. I am sending my doctors to see her, and I want you to go too.’

‘Of course.’ I did not know what else I could say.

‘Sit with her, read to her, be her companion as you have been mine. If she is well enough to come to court, you can travel with her and keep her spirits up on the journey. If she is dying you can comfort her, send for a priest and try to turn her thoughts to her salvation. It is not too late for her to be forgiven by God. Pray with her.’

‘Anything else?’ My voice was a thread of sound. The queen had to lean forward to hear me.

‘Spy on her,’ she said flatly. ‘Everything she does, everyone she sees, everyone in that household of hers who are all heretics and liars, every one. Every name you hear mentioned, every friend they hold dear. Write to me every day and tell me what you have learned. I have to know if she is plotting against me. I have to have evidence.’

I clasped my hands tight around my knees and felt the tremble in my legs and the quiver in my fingers. ‘I cannot be a spy,’ I breathed. ‘I cannot betray a young woman to her death.’

‘You have no other master now,’ she reminded me gently. ‘Northumberland is dead and Robert Dudley in the Tower. What else can you do but my bidding?’