‘I have not been to the shop for some days, sir,’ I said.

‘When it comes I shall be glad of it,’ he said casually.

‘Has the queen summoned you, sir?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I am here privately to visit the Princess Elizabeth. She asked me to bring her some manuscripts. She is studying Italian and I have brought some very interesting old texts from Venice.’

Still I was not warned. ‘Shall I take you to her?’ I offered. ‘This is not the way to the palace. We can go to the stable-yard by the high road.’

Even as he was about to reply, the little gate in the wall opened silently, and Kat Ashley stood in the doorway.

‘Ah, the fool,’ she said pleasantly. ‘And the magician.’

‘You miscall us both,’ he said with quiet dignity, and got down from his saddle. A pageboy ducked out from under Kat Ashley’s arm to hold John Dee’s horse. I realised that he was expected, that they had planned he should enter the palace in secrecy, and—sometimes I was a fool indeed—I realised that it would have been better for me if I had not seen him or, if I had, better to have turned my head and ridden blindly past.

‘Take her horse too,’ Kat Ashley told the lad.

‘I’ll take her back to the stable,’ I said. ‘And go about my business.’

‘This is your business,’ she said bluntly. ‘Now you are here you will have to come with us.’

‘I don’t have to do anything but what the queen commands me,’ I said abruptly.

John Dee put his hand gently on my arm. ‘Hannah, I could use your gift in the work I have to do here. And your lord would want you to help me.’

I hesitated, and while I paused, Kat took hold of my hand and fairly dragged me into the walled garden. ‘Come in now,’ she said. ‘You can scurry off once you’re inside, but you are putting Mr Dee and me in danger while you argue out here in the open. Come now, and leave later if you must.’

As ever, the thought of being watched frightened me. I tossed my reins to the lad and followed Kat, who went to a little doorway, hidden by ivy, which despite all my time in the palace I had never noticed before. She led us up a winding stair, and came out through another hidden doorway, shielded by a tapestry, opposite the princess’s rooms.

She knocked on the door with a special rhythm and it opened at once. John Dee and I went quickly inside. No-one had seen us.

Elizabeth was seated on a stool in the window, a lute across her knees, her new Italian lute master a few paces away setting out music on a stand. They looked as innocent as stage players enacting innocence. Indeed they looked so very innocent that the short hairs on the back of my cropped neck prickled as if I were a frightened dog.