‘I am sure of it,’ I said: empty words.

‘When Philip of Spain comes we shall make many changes,’ she assured me. ‘You will see then, things will be better.’

‘He is to come soon?’

‘This month.’

I nodded. It was the date of Elizabeth’s death sentence. He had sworn he would not come to England while the Protestant princess was alive. She had no more than two dozen days left to live.

‘Your Grace,’ I said tentatively. ‘My old master, Robert Dudley, is still in the Tower.’

‘I know it,’ Queen Mary said quietly. ‘Along with other traitors. I wish to hear of none of them. Those who have been found guilty must die to keep the country safe.’

‘I know you will be just, and I know you will be merciful,’ I prompted her.

‘I certainly will be just,’ she repeated. ‘But some, Elizabeth among them, have outworn mercy from me. She had better pray that she can receive it from God.’

And she touched her horse’s flank with her whip and the court broke into a canter and there was nothing more to be said.

SUMMER 1554

In the middle of May, the proposed month of the queen’s wedding, as the weather grew warmer, still the scaffold was not built for Elizabeth, still Philip of Spain did not come. Then, one day, there was a sudden change at the Tower. A Norfolk squire and his blue-liveried men marched into the Tower to make it their own. Elizabeth went from door to window, in a frenzy of fear, craning her head at the arrow-slit, peering through the keyhole of the door trying to see what was happening. Finally, she sent me out to ask if he had come to oversee her execution, and she asked the guard on the door if the scaffold was being built on the green. They swore it was not, but she sent me to look. She could trust nobody, she could never be at peace until she saw with her own eyes, and she would not be allowed to see.

‘Trust me,’ I said briefly.

She caught my hands in her own. ‘Swear you won’t lie to me,’ she said. ‘I have to know if it is to be today. I have to prepare, I am not ready.’ She bit her lip, which was already chapped and sore from a hundred nips. ‘I’m only twenty, Hannah, I am not ready to die tomorrow.’

I nodded, and went out. The green was empty, there were no sawn planks awaiting a carpenter. She was safe for another day. I stopped at the watergate and fell into conversation with one of the blue-liveried men. The gossip he told me sent me flying back to the princess.

‘You’re saved,’ I said briefly, coming in through the door of her cramped room. Kat Ashley looked up and made the sign of a cross, the old habit forced out of her by her fear.

Elizabeth, who had been kneeling up at the window, looking out at the circling seagulls, turned around, her face pale, her eyelids red. ‘What?’