‘The queen fell in love with a husband who married for policy,’ Elizabeth decreed. ‘I would never be such a fool. If he married me it would be quite the reverse. I would be the one marrying for policy and he would be the one marrying for love. And we would see whose heart broke first.’

‘Has he told you he loves you?’ I whispered, aghast, thinking of the queen lost in her loneliness of the enclosed room. ‘Has he said he would marry you, if she died?’

‘He adores me,’ Elizabeth said with quiet pleasure. ‘I could make him say anything.’

* * *

It was hard to get news of John Dee without seeming overly curious. He had simply gone, as if he had never been, disappeared into the terrible dungeons of the Inquisition in England at St Paul’s, supervised by Bishop Bonner, whose resolute questioning was feeding the fires of Smithfield at the rate of half a dozen poor men and women every week.

‘What news of John Dee?’ I asked Will Somers quietly, one morning when I found him recumbent on a bench, basking like a lizard in the summer sunshine.

‘He’s not dead yet,’ he said, barely opening an eye. ‘Hush.’

‘Are you sleeping?’ I asked, wanting to know more.

‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said. ‘In that, he and I have something in common. But I am not being stretched on the rack, nor being pressed with a hundred rocks on my chest, nor being taken for questioning at midnight, at dawn, and as a rough alternative to breakfast. So not that much in common.’

‘Has he confessed?’ I asked, my voice a little breath.

‘Can’t have done,’ Will said pragmatically. ‘Because if he had confessed he would be dead, and there his similarity to me would be ended, since I am not dead but merely asleep.’

‘Will . . .’

‘Fast asleep and dreaming, and not talking at all.’

* * *

I went to find Elizabeth. I had thought of speaking to Kat Ashley but I knew she despised me for my mixed allegiances, and I doubted her discretion. I heard the blast of the hunting horns and I knew that Elizabeth would have been riding. I hurried down to the stable-yard and was there as the hounds came streaming in, with the riders behind them. Elizabeth was riding a new black hunter, a gift from the king, her cap askew, her face glowing. The court was all dismounting and shouting for their grooms. I sprang forward to hold her horse and said quietly to her, unheard in the general noise, ‘Princess, do you have any news of John Dee?’

She turned her back to me and patted her horse’s shoulder. ‘There, Sunburst,’ she said loudly, speaking to the horse. ‘You did well.’ To me in an undertone she said: ‘They are holding him for conjuring and calculing.’

‘What?’ I asked, horrified.

She was absolutely calm. ‘They say that he attempted to cast the queen’s astrology chart, and that he summoned up spirits to foretell the future.’