King Philip never checked them, though a more careful brother-in-law would have guarded against Elizabeth’s head being turned by the flattery of his court. But he never said anything to rein in her growing vanity. Nor did he speak now of her marrying and going away from England, nor of her visit to his aunt in Hungary. Indeed, he made it clear that Elizabeth was an honoured permanent member of the court and heir to the throne.

I thought this was mostly policy on his part; but then one day I was looking from the palace window to a sheltered lawn on the south side of the palace and I saw a couple walking, heads close together, down the yew tree allée, half-hidden and then half-revealed by the dark strong trees. I smiled as I watched, thinking at first that it was one of the queen’s ladies with a Spanish courtier, and the queen would laugh when I told her of this clandestine courtship.

But then the girl turned her head and I saw a flash from under her dark hood, the unmistakable glint of copper hair. The girl was Elizabeth, and the man walking beside her, close enough to touch but not touching, was Prince Philip: Mary’s husband. Elizabeth had a book open in her hands, her head was bowed over it, she was the very picture of the devout student, but her walk was the gliding hip-swaying stroll of a woman with a man matching his step to hers.

All at once, I was reminded of the first time I had seen Elizabeth, when she had teased Tom Seymour, her stepmother’s husband, to chase her in the garden at Chelsea. This might be seven years later, but it was the same aroused hot-blooded girl who slid a dark sideways glance at another woman’s husband and invited him to come a little closer.

The king looked back at the palace, wondering how many people might be watching from the windows, and I expected him to weigh the danger of being seen, and take the Spanish way, the cautious way. But instead he gave a reckless shrug of his shoulders and fell into step a little closer to Elizabeth, who gave a start of innocent surprise, and put her long index finger under the word in her book so that she should not lose her place. I saw her look up at him, the colour rising in her cheeks, her eyes wide with innocence, but the sly smile on her lips. He slipped his arm around her waist so that he could walk with her, looking over her shoulder at the passage in her book as if they both could see the words, as if they cared for anything but the other’s touch, as if they were not utterly absorbed in the sound of their own rapid breathing.

* * *

I put myself outside Elizabeth’s door that night and waited for her and her ladies to go to dinner.