‘I am here to serve the queen because I love her, and because I can’t leave her now, not while she is waiting for her baby to be born. And I serve the Princess Elizabeth because . . . because she is like no other woman I have ever met.’

Elizabeth laughed. ‘You study me as if I were your book,’ she said. ‘I have seen you do it. I know you do. You watch me as if you would learn how to be a woman.’

I nodded, granting her nothing. ‘Perhaps.’

She smiled. ‘You love my sister, don’t you?’

I faced her without fear. ‘I do. Who could not?’

‘Then would you not ease her burden by telling her when this slow baby will come? It is a month late, Hannah. People are laughing at her. If she has mistaken her dates, would you not want to tell her that the baby in her belly is growing well and due this very week, or the next?’

I hesitated. ‘How could I tell her I knew such a thing?’

‘Your gift! Your gift!’ she exclaimed irritably. ‘You can tell her you just saw it in a vision. You don’t have to say the vision was conjured in my rooms.’

I thought for a moment.

‘And when you go to see Lord Robert again you could advise him,’ Elizabeth said quietly. ‘You could tell him that he must make his peace with her for she will put her son on the throne of England, and England will be a Catholic and Spanish power forever. You could tell him to give up waiting and hoping for anything else. You could tell him that the cause is lost and he must convert, plead for clemency and set himself free. That news would mean that he could plead for his freedom. You could set him free.’

I said nothing but she understood the rise of colour in my cheeks. ‘I don’t know how he can bear it,’ she said, her voice low, weaving a spell around me. ‘Poor Robert, waiting and waiting in the Tower and never knowing what the future will bring. If he knew that Mary would be on the throne for the next twenty years and her son after her, don’t you think he would sue for his freedom and set himself at liberty again? His lands want him, his people need him, he’s a man that needs the earth under his boots and the wind in his face. He’s not a man to be mewed up like a hooded hawk for half of his life.’

‘If he knew for certain that the queen would have a son, would he be able to get free?’

‘If a prince was born to her she would release most of them in the Tower for she would know that she was safe on the throne. We would all give up.’

I hesitated no longer. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

Elizabeth nodded calmly. ‘You need an inner room, don’t you?’ she asked John Dee.