At the head of the magnificent cradle was carved a couplet to welcome the prince:

The child which Thou to Mary, oh Lord of Might, does send To England’s joy: in health preserve, keep, and defend

In the rooms outside the privy chambers were midwives, rockers, nurses, apothecaries and doctors in a constant stream of coming and going, and everywhere the nursemaids ran with piles of freshly laundered linen to store in the birthing chamber.

Elizabeth, now free to walk in the palace, stood on the threshold of the confinement room with me. ‘All those weeks in there,’ she said in utter horror. ‘It would be like being walled up alive.’

‘She needs to rest,’ I said. Secretly I was afraid for the queen in that dark room. I thought that she would be ill if she were to be kept from the light and the sunshine for so long. She would not be allowed to see the king, nor to have any company or music or singing or dancing. She would be like a prisoner in her own chamber. And in less than two months’ time, when the baby would come, it would be unendurably hot, locked into that room, curtained in darkness and shrouded in cloth.

Elizabeth stepped back from the doorway with an ostentatiously virginal shudder, and led the way through the presence chamber and into the gallery. Long solemn portraits of Spanish grandees and princes now lined the walls. Elizabeth went past them without turning her head, as if by ignoring them she could make them disappear.

‘Funny to think of her releasing me from prison just as she goes into her confinement,’ she said, hiding her glee as best she could. ‘If she knew what it was like being trapped inside four walls she would change the tradition. I will never be locked up again.’

‘She will do her duty for the baby,’ I said firmly.

Elizabeth smiled, holding to her own opinion with serene self-confidence. ‘I hear you went to see Lord Robert in the Tower.’ She took my arm and drew me close to her, so that she could whisper.

‘He wanted some writing paper from my father’s old shop,’ I replied steadily.

‘He gave you a message for Kat,’ Elizabeth pursued. ‘She told me herself.’

‘I delivered it to her, herself. About ribbons,’ I said dampeningly. ‘He is accustomed to use me as his haberdasher and stationer. It is where he first saw me, at my father’s shop.’

She paused and looked at me. ‘So you know nothing about anything, Hannah?’

‘Exactly so,’ I said.

‘You won’t see this then,’ she said smartly, and released her hold on me to turn and smile over her shoulder at a gentleman in a dark suit, who had come out of a side room behind us and was following us, walking slowly in our wake.

To my amazement I recognised the king. I pressed myself back against the wall and bowed, but he did not even notice me, his eyes were fixed on Elizabeth. His pace quickened as he saw the momentary hesitation in Elizabeth’s step, as she paused and smiled at him; but she did not turn and curtsey as she should have done. She walked serenely down the length of the gallery, her hips slightly swaying. Her every pace was an invitation to any man to follow her. When she reached the end of the gallery at the panelled door she paused, her hand on the handle, and turned to glance over her shoulder, an open challenge to him to follow, then she slipped through the door and in a second she was gone, leaving him staring after her.