I thought I would see the prince clearly at the wedding feast but as I was hurrying on my way to the hall, I heard the rattle of the weapons of the Spanish guard and I stepped back into a window embrasure as the men at arms marched down and then came the bustle of his court after them, the prince himself at the centre. And then, amid all this hustle of excitement, something happened to me. It was caused by the flurry of silks and velvets, embroidery and diamonds, the dark full richness of the Spanish court. It was caused by the scent of the pomade they wore on their hair and beards, and the perfumed pomander that every man had pinned with a golden buckle to his belt. It was the clink of the priceless inlaid breastplates of the soldiery, the tap of the beautifully forged swords against the stone of the walls. It was the rapid interchange of the language, which was like the coo in a dovecote of home to me who had been a stranger in a strange land for so very long. I smelled the Spaniards and saw them and heard them and sensed them in a way that I had never apprehended anything before, and I stumbled back, feeling for the cold wall behind me to steady me, almost fainting, overwhelmed with a homesickness and a longing for Spain that was so strong that it was almost like a gripe in my belly. I think I even cried out, and one man heard me, one man turned dark familiar eyes and looked towards me.

‘What is it, lad?’ he asked, seeing my golden pageboy suit.

‘It’s the queen’s holy fool,’ one of his men remarked in Spanish. ‘Some toy that she affects. A boy-girl, a hermaphrodite.’

‘Good God, a wizened old maid served by no maid at all,’ someone quipped, his accent Castilian. The prince said ‘Hush,’ but absentmindedly, as if he was not defending a new wife but reprimanding a familiar offence.

‘Are you sick, child?’ he asked me in Spanish.

One of his companions stepped forward and took my hand. ‘The prince asks are you sick?’ he demanded in careful English.

I felt my hand tremble at his touch, the touch of a Spanish lord on my Spanish skin. I expected him to know me at once, to know that I understood every word he said, that my reply in Spanish was readier on my tongue than my English.

‘I am not sick,’ I said in English, speaking very quietly and hoping that no-one would hear the vestiges of my accent. ‘I was startled by the prince.’

‘You startled her only,’ he laughed, turning to the prince and speaking in Spanish. ‘God grant that you may startle her mistress.’

The prince nodded, indifferent to me, as a servant beneath his notice, and walked on.

‘She’s more likely to startle him,’ someone remarked quietly from the back. ‘God save us, how are we to put our prince to bed with such an aged dame?’