If Sir Henry’s men had not known the road to Winchester we could have found it by following the crowds. It seemed that every man, woman and child wanted to see the queen take her husband at last, and the roads were crowded with farmers bringing their produce into the greatest market in the country, entertainers setting up their pitches all along the way, whores and mountebanks and pedlars with cures, goose girls and washerwomen, carters and riders leading strings of spare horses. Then there was all the panoply and organisation of the royal court on the move: the messengers coming and going, the men in livery, the men at arms, the outriders and those galloping desperately to catch up.

Sir Henry’s men carried reports of Elizabeth for the queen’s council, so we parted at the entrance of Wolvesey Palace, the bishop’s great house where the queen was staying. I went straight to the queen’s rooms and found a crowd of people at every doorway pushing their way forward with petitions that she might grant. I slid under elbows, between shoulders, sneaking between panelled walls and bulky squires till I reached the guards on the door and stood before their crossed halberds.

‘The queen’s fool,’ I announced myself. One man recognised me. He and his fellow stepped forward and let me dart in behind them and open the door while they held back the weight of the crowd.

Inside the presence chamber it was scarcely less crowded but the clothes were more silks and embroidered leather, and the altercations were taking place in French and Spanish as well as English. Here were the ambitious and rising men and women of the kingdom jockeying for a place and anxious to be seen by the new king who would be creating a court which must—surely to God!—include at least some true-born Englishmen as well as the hundreds of Spaniards he had insisted on bringing over as his personal retinue.

I skirted the perimeter of the hall, overhearing the snatches of conversation, which was mostly scandalous, often speculating on what the handsome young prince would make of the old queen, and I found that my cheeks were blazing with temper and my teeth gritted by the time I got to the door of her private rooms.

The guard let me through with a nod of recognition but even inside the queen’s privy chamber there was no peace. There were more ladies and attendants, musicians, singers, escorts and general hangers-on than I had ever seen with her before. I looked around for her, still she was not there, the chair which served as her throne by the fireside was empty. Jane Dormer was in the window-seat sewing, looking as determinedly unimpressed as she had been on the day I had first met her when the queen had been a sick woman, in a court of shadows with no chance of the throne.

‘I have come to the queen,’ I said to her with a little bow.