I looked up at her, my face innocent. ‘With you, Mrs Ashley. To the Lady Elizabeth.’

‘She’ll see no-one,’ the woman ruled. ‘She is too ill.’

‘Then let me pray at the foot of her bed,’ I said quietly.

‘If she is so very ill she will want the fool’s prayers,’ someone said from the hall. ‘That child can see angels.’

Kat Ashley, caught out by her own story, nodded briefly and let me follow her out of the door, through the presence chamber and into Elizabeth’s private rooms.

There was a heavy damask curtain over the door to shut out the noise from the presence chamber. There were matching curtains at the window, drawn tight against light and air. Only candles illuminated the room with their flickering light and showed the princess, red hair spread like a haemorrhage on the pillow, her face white.

At once I could see she was ill indeed. Her belly was as swollen as if she were pregnant but her hands as they lay on the embroidered coverlet were swollen too, the fingers fat and thick as if she were a gross old lady and not a girl of twenty. Her lovely face was puffy, even her neck was thick.

‘What is the matter with her?’ I demanded.

‘Dropsy,’ Mrs Ashley replied. ‘Worse than she has ever had it before. She needs rest and peace.’

‘My lady,’ I breathed.

She raised her head and peered at me from under swollen eyelids. ‘Who?’

‘The queen’s fool,’ I said. ‘Hannah.’

She veiled her eyes. ‘A message?’ she asked, her voice a thread.

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I am come to you from Queen Mary. She has sent me to be your companion.’

‘I thank her,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘You can tell her that I am sick indeed and need to be alone.’

‘She has sent doctors to make you better,’ I said. ‘They are waiting to see you.’

‘I am too sick to travel,’ Elizabeth said, speaking strongly for the first time.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. She was ill, no-one could manifest a swelling of the very knuckles of their fingers in order to escape a charge of treason. But she would play her illness as the trump card it was.

‘She has sent her councillors to accompany you,’ I warned her.

‘Who?’

‘Your cousin, Lord William Howard, among others.’

I saw her swollen lips twist in a bitter smile. ‘She must be very determined against me if she sends my own kin to arrest me,’ she remarked.

‘May I be your companion during your illness?’ I suggested.

She turned her head away. ‘I am too tired,’ she said. ‘You can come back when I am better.’

I rose from my kneeling position by the bed and stepped backwards. Kat Ashley jerked her head towards the door to send me from the room.

‘And you can tell those who have come to take her that she is near death!’ she said bluntly. ‘You can’t threaten her with the scaffold, she is slipping away all on her own!’ A half-sob escaped her and I saw that she was drawn as tight as a lute string with anxiety for the princess.