She raised herself a little on her pillows. ‘I am almost too sick to listen, so tell me briefly. Am I to be released?’

‘If you will admit your fault.’

Her dark eyes flared under the puffy eyelids. ‘Tell me exactly what she said.’

As precisely as a clerk I recited to her what the queen had offered. I spared her nothing, not the news of the pregnancy, her sister’s sadness at Elizabeth’s resentment, her willingness to be friends again.

I had thought she would rage when she heard the queen was with child, but she did not even comment. I realised then that she had known the news before I told her. In that case, she had a spy so well positioned that he or she knew a secret I had thought was known only to the king, the queen, Jane Dormer and me. Elizabeth, like a cornered dog, should never be underestimated.

‘I will think about what you have told me,’ she said, following her usual instinct to buy time. ‘Are you to stay with me? Or take an answer back to her?’

‘I am not to go back to court until Christmas,’ I said. Temptingly, I added: ‘If you were to beg her forgiveness perhaps you could be at the court for Christmas. It’s very gay now, Princess, the court is filled with handsome grandees and there is dancing every night and the queen is merry.’

She turned her head away from me. ‘I should not dance with a Spaniard even if I were to go.’ She considered the picture for a moment. ‘They could throng around me and beg me to dance and I would not get to my feet.’

‘And you would be the only princess,’ I reminded her persuasively. ‘The only princess in court. If you refused to dance they would all gather round you. And there would be new gowns. You would be the only virgin princess in England, at the greatest court in the world.’

‘I’m not a child to tempt with toys,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘And I am not a fool. You can go now, Hannah, you have served her and done her bidding. But for the rest of your stay here you shall serve me.’

I nodded and rose to my feet. For a moment I hesitated; she did look so very sick as she lay on her bed facing the prospect of either a confession to treason or an unending imprisonment and disgrace. ‘God guide your ladyship,’ I said with sudden compassion. ‘God guide you, Princess Elizabeth, and bring you safely out of here.’

She closed her eyes and I saw her eyelashes were darkened with tears. ‘Amen,’ she whispered.

* * *

She did not do it. She would not confess. She knew that her stubbornness would condemn her to stay at Woodstock perhaps forever, and she feared that her health would not outlast the queen’s resentment. But to confess was to throw herself into the queen’s power absolutely, and she would not do that. She mistrusted Mary’s mercy, and the relentless Tudor stubbornness drove both sisters. Mary had been named as heir, and then named as bastard, and then made heir again. Exactly the same ordeal had been endured by Elizabeth. Both of them had decided never to surrender, always to claim their birthright, never to despair that the crown would come. Elizabeth would not relinquish the habit of a lifetime, not even for a chance to shine at a wealthy happy court and be received with honour. She might or might not be guilty, but she would never confess.