‘I shall write to you,’ I promised him. ‘I shall tell you everything that I can. I cannot be disloyal to the queen—’

‘Nor now to Elizabeth either?’ he suggested with a smile.

‘She is a wonderful young woman,’ I said. ‘You could not be in her service and not admire her.’

He laughed. ‘Child, you want to love and be loved so much that you are always on all sides at once.’

I shook my head. ‘Nobody could blame me. The queen’s servants all love her, and Elizabeth . . . She is Elizabeth.’

‘I’ve known her all her life,’ he said. ‘I taught her to jump with her first pony. She was then a most impressive child, and when she grew older, a little queen in the making.’

‘Princess,’ I reminded him.

‘Princess,’ he corrected himself. ‘Give her my best of wishes, my love and my loyalty. Tell her that if I could have dined with her I would have done.’

I nodded.

‘She is her father’s daughter,’ he said fondly. ‘By God, I pity Henry Bedingfield. Once she has recovered from her fright she will lead him a merry dance. He’s not the man to command Elizabeth, not even with the whole council to support him. She will outwit and outman him and he will be driven to distraction.’

‘Husband?’ Amy rose from her seat at the table.

‘My lady?’ He let go my hand and stepped back towards her.

‘I would be alone with you,’ she said simply.

I had a sudden rush of absolute hatred towards her and with it came a momentary vision so dark that I stepped back and hissed, like a cat will suddenly spit at a strange dog.

‘What is it?’ Lord Robert asked me.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I shook my head to dispel the picture. It was nothing: nothing I could see clearly, nothing I could tell. It was Amy thrown down, pushed clear away from Robert Dudley, and I knew it was my vision clouded by jealousy and a woman’s spite that gave me a picture of her flung away, pushed into a darkness as black as death. ‘Nothing,’ I said again.

He looked at me quizzically but he did not challenge me. ‘You had better go,’ he said quietly. ‘Do not forget me, Hannah.’

I nodded, and went to the door. The guard swung it open for me, I bowed to Lady Dudley and she gave me a brief dismissive nod. She was too anxious to be alone with her husband to care for being polite to someone who was little more than a servant.

‘Good day to you, your ladyship,’ I said, just to force her to speak to me.

I could not make her acknowledge me. She had turned her back to me; as far as she was concerned, I had gone.

* * *

Elizabeth’s gloom and fear did not lift until the litter came to the gateway of the Tower and she went out under the dark portcullis into the city of London. Once we were through the city I, and a handful of ladies, rode behind, and the further we went west the more the march turned into a triumphal procession. At the small villages when they heard the rattle of the horses’ bits and the clatter of the hooves, they came running out and skipped and danced along the road, the children crying to be lifted up to see the Protestant princess. At the little town of Windsor, in the very shadow of the queen’s castle, at Eton and then Wycombe, the people poured out of their houses to smile and wave at her, and Elizabeth, who could never resist an audience, had her pillows plumped up so that she could sit up to see and be seen.