A woman ready for love would have replied at once, a girl ready for womanhood would have at least sent some sort of reply. I read it through very carefully, and then I put it at the back of a fire and burned it, as if I would burn my desire to ashes, along with his letter. At least I had the honesty to recognise my desire. I had felt it when he had held me in the shadowy press room, it had blazed up when he had crushed me to him when we parted at the wagon. But I knew that if I replied to him, he would come to fetch me, and then I would be his wife and a woman tamed. This was a man who believed that God had ordained him to be my natural master. A woman who loved him would have to learn obedience, and I was not yet ready to be an obedient wife.

Besides, I had no time to think about Daniel, or about my future. The messenger from London had brought papers for Elizabeth as well as me. When I entered her rooms I found her wound up to breaking pitch at the prospect of her sister’s marriage, and her own disinheritance. She was stalking the room like a furious cat. She had received a cold message from the queen’s chamberlain that Philip of Spain had left his country and was sailing for his new home of England, that the court would meet him at Winchester—but Elizabeth herself was not invited. And—as if to add insult to Elizabeth’s hurt pride—she was to send me to join the queen and the court at once, on receipt of these orders. The fool was valued more than the princess. My service to Elizabeth was to be put aside, I imagined that it would be forgotten as Elizabeth was currently forgotten.

‘This is to insult me,’ she spat.

‘It will not be the queen’s doing,’ I said, soothingly. ‘It will just be the gathering of her court.’

‘I am part of her court!’

I said nothing, diplomatically silent about the numbers of times that Elizabeth had refused to join the court, feigning ill health or demanding a delay, because she had her own reasons to stay at her home.

‘She does not dare to meet Philip of Spain with me at her side!’ she said crudely. ‘She knows he will look from the old queen to the young princess and prefer me!’

I did not correct her. No-one would have looked at Elizabeth with desire at the moment, she was bloated with her illness again, and her eyes were raw and red. Only anger was keeping her on her feet.

‘He is betrothed to her,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s not a matter of desire.’

‘She cannot leave me here to rot my life away! I will die here, Hannah! I have been sick near to death and there is no-one to care for me, she won’t send me doctors, she is hoping I will die!’