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I could not get the measure of Amy Dudley as we rode through the icy countryside of England in those cold days of January 1558. She was a good rider but she seemed to take little pleasure in it, not even on the days when the sun rose like a red disc on the horizon and when a few robins hopped and hid in the leafless hedgerows, and the frost in the morning made the blood sing. I thought it was the absence of her husband that made her so sulky; but her companion, Mrs Oddingsell, did not try to cheer her, they did not even speak of him. They rode in silence, as women accustomed to it.

I had to ride behind them, all the way from Gravesend to Chichester, with the baby strapped on my back and every evening I was aching from my buttocks to my neck with the strain. The extraordinary child had barely made a noise from the moment that his mother had half-flung him at me as the French cavalry rode her down. I had changed his clout with some linen lent to me on board ship, and wrapped him in a sailor’s woollen knitted vest and generally lugged him around as if he were a box that someone had insisted I carry against my will. He had not uttered one word of inquiry or protest. Sleeping, he had rested against me, nestled in as if he were my own; awake, he sat on my lap or on the floor at my feet, or stood, one hand holding firmly on to my breeches. He said not one word, not in French, the language of his mother, nor in English. He regarded me with solemn dark eyes and said nothing.

He seemed to have a certainty that he should be with me. He would not fall asleep unless I was watching him, and if I tried to put him down and move away from him he would raise himself up and toddle after me, still silent, still uncomplaining, but with a little face which became more and more crumpled with distress as he got left behind.

I was not a naturally maternal woman, I had not been a girl for dolls, and of course there had been no baby brother or sister for me to nurse. Yet I could not help but admire this small person’s tenacity. I had suddenly come into his life as his protector, and he would ensure that he stayed by my side. I started to like the feeling of his fat little hand stretching trustfully up for mine, I started to sleep well with him nestled against my side.

Lady Amy Dudley did nothing to help me with him in the long cold ride. There was no reason that she should, she did not want me nor him. But it would have been kind of her to order one of the men to take me on a pillion saddle behind him, so that I might have held the child in my arms and eased my aching back. She must have seen that at the end of a long day in the saddle I was so exhausted that I could barely stand. It would have been kind of her to see me housed quickly, to have made sure that there was gruel for the baby. But she did nothing for me, nothing for him. She eyed us both with a glaring suspicion and said not one word to me, other than an order to be ready to leave at the appointed time.