‘Keep the door shut,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know how long we will be.’

‘Can’t I be inside?’ she said. ‘I won’t speak.’

He shook his head. ‘Princess, you don’t have to speak, you have all the presence of a queen. This has to be just Hannah and me, and the angels if they will come to us.’

‘But you will tell me everything,’ she urged him. ‘Not just the things you think I should know. You will tell me all that there is?’

He nodded and shut the door on her eager face and then turned back to me. He pulled a stool before the mirror and seated me gently, looking over my head to my reflection in the mirror. ‘You are willing?’ he confirmed.

‘I am,’ I said seriously.

‘It is a great gift that you have,’ he said quietly. ‘I would give all my learning to be able to do it.’

‘I just wish there could be a resolution,’ I said. ‘I wish Elizabeth might have her throne and yet the queen keep it. I wish the queen might have her son and Elizabeth not be disinherited. I wish with all my heart that Lord Robert might be free and yet not plot against the queen. I wish I could be here and yet be with my father.’

He smiled. ‘You and I are the most unhelpful of conspirators,’ he said gently. ‘For I don’t mind which queen is on the throne as long as she will allow the people to follow their faith. And I want the libraries restored and learning allowed, and for this country to explore the seas and spread outward and outward to the new lands to the west.’

‘But how will this work bring it about?’ I asked.

‘We will know what the angels advise,’ he said quietly. ‘There could be no better guide for us.’

John Dee stepped back from the mirror and I heard his quiet voice pray in Latin that we should do the work of God and that the angels would come to us. I said ‘Amen,’ heart-felt, and then waited.

It seemed to take a very long time. I saw the candles reflected in the mirror, the darkness around them became darker and they seemed to grow more bright. Then I saw that at the core of every candle there was a halo of darkness, and inside the halo of darkness there was the black wick of the candle and a little haze around it. I grew so fascinated with this anatomy of flame that I could not remember what I should be doing, I just stared and stared into the moving lights until I felt that I had fallen asleep, and then John Dee’s hand was gentle on my shoulder and I heard his voice in my ear saying: ‘Drink this, child.’

It was a cup of warm ale and I sat back on my stool and sipped it, conscious of a heaviness behind my eyes and weariness, as if I were ill.