I put my hands over my ears. ‘You are offensive,’ I said frankly.

Elizabeth whirled on me. ‘And you are unfaithful!’ she shouted. ‘You should be my friend, and stand my friend whatever else happens, whatever I say. You were begged to me as a fool, you should be mine. And I say nothing but the truth. I would be ashamed to chase after a young man like her. I would rather die than court a man young enough to be my son. I would rather die now than get to her age and be an unwanted old maid, good for nothing, pleasing to nobody, useless!’

‘I am not unfaithful,’ I said steadily. ‘And I am your companion, she did not beg me as a fool to you. I would be your friend. But I cannot listen to you cursing her like a Billingsgate fishwife.’

She let out a wail at that and dropped to the ground, her face as white as apple blossom, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her hands clamped over her mouth.

I knelt beside her and took her hands. They were icy, she looked near to collapse. ‘Lady Elizabeth,’ I said soothingly. ‘Be calm. It is a marriage which is bound to take place and there is nothing you can do about it.’

‘But not even invited . . .’ She gave a little wail.

‘Is hard. But she has been merciful to you.’ I paused. ‘Remember, he would have had you beheaded.’

‘And I am to be grateful for that?’

‘You could be calm. And wait.’

The face she turned up to me was suddenly glacial. ‘If she bears him a son then I will have nothing to wait for but a forced marriage to some Papist prince, or death.’

‘You said to me that any day you could stay alive was a victory,’ I reminded her.

She did not smile in reply. She shook her head. ‘Staying alive is not important,’ she said quietly. ‘It never was. I was staying alive for England. Staying alive to be England’s princess. Staying alive to inherit.’

I did not correct her, the words were true for her now, though I thought I knew Elizabeth too well to see her as a woman only staying alive for her country. But I did not want to launch her into one of her passionate tantrums. ‘You must do that,’ I said soothingly. ‘Stay alive for England. Wait.’

* * *

She let me go the next day though her resentment was as powerful as that of a child excluded from a treat. I did not know what upset her more: the gravity of her situation as the only Protestant princess in Roman Catholic England, or not being invited to the greatest event in Christendom since the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When she waved me away without a word and with a sulky turn of her head I thought that missing the party was probably the worst thing for her that morning.