‘But to do what?’

She smiled at me, though her eyes were dark with fear. ‘Ah, Hannah, you have never longed to live as I long to live if you do not know that another day is the most precious thing. I would do anything right now to gain another day, and tomorrow it will be the same. Every day we do not reach London is another day that I am alive. Every morning that I wake, every night that I sleep is a victory for me.’

On the fourth day into the journey a messenger met us on the road, carrying a letter for Lord William Howard. He read it and tucked it into the front of his doublet, his face suddenly grim. Elizabeth waited till he was looking away and then crooked her swollen finger at me. I drew up my horse beside the litter.

‘I would give a good deal to know what was in that letter,’ she said. ‘Go and listen for me. They won’t notice you.’

My opportunity came when we stopped to dine. Lord Howard and the other councillors were watching their horses being taken into the stalls. I saw him pull the letter from inside his doublet and I paused beside him to straighten my riding boot.

‘Lady Jane is dead,’ he announced baldly. ‘Executed two days ago. Guilford Dudley before her.’

‘And Robert?’ I demanded urgently, bobbing up, my voice cutting through the buzz of comment. ‘Robert Dudley?’

Much was always forgiven a fool. He nodded at my interest. ‘I have no news of him,’ he said. ‘I should think he was executed alongside his brother.’

I felt the world become blurred around me and I realised I was about to faint. I plumped down on to the cold step and put my head in my hands. ‘Lord Robert,’ I whispered into my knees. ‘My lord.’

It was impossible that he was dead, that bright dark-eyed vitality gone forever. It was impossible to think that the executioner could slice off his head as if he were an ordinary traitor, that his dark eyes and his sweet smile and his easy charm would not save him at the block. Who could bring themselves to kill bonny Robin? Who could sign such a warrant, what headsman could bear to do it? And it was all the more impossible since I had seen the prophecy in his favour. I had heard the words as they had come out of my mouth, I had smelled the candle smoke, I had seen the flickering bob of the flame and the mirrors which ran reflection into glimmer all the way back into Mr Dee’s darkness. I had known then that he would be beloved by a queen, that he would die in his bed. I had been shown it, the words had been told to me. If my Lord Robert was dead then not only was the great love of my life dead, but also I had been taught in the hardest way possible that my gift was a chimera and a delusion. Everything was over in one sweep of the axe.