‘What jesting?’

‘The princess was witty about him liking court better than the country,’ he said, fumbling for words. ‘Witty about the charms of the court. Said he would not bury himself in the fields with wife.’

The smile was quite wiped from her face. ‘And he said?’

‘More jests,’ he said. ‘I cannot remember them, my lady. His lordship is a witty man, and he and the princess . . .’ He broke off at the look on her face.

‘He and the princess: what?’ she spat at him.

The messenger shuffled his feet and turned his hat in his hands. ‘She is a witty woman,’ he said doltishly. ‘The words flew so fast between them I could not make out what they said. Something about the country, something about promises. Some of the time they spoke another language so it was secret between themselves . . . Certainly, she likes him well. He is a very gallant man.’

Amy Dudley jumped from her chair and strode to the bay window. ‘He is a very faithless man,’ she said, very low. Then she turned to the messenger. ‘Very well, you can go. But next time when I order you to wait for him, I don’t want to see you back here without him.’

He threw a look at me which said very plainly that a servant could hardly command his master to return to his wife in the middle of a flirtation with the Princess of England. I waited till he had left the room and then excused myself and hared down the gallery after him, Danny bouncing along on my hip, clinging to my shoulder, his little legs gripped around my waist, as I ran.

‘Stop! Stop!’ I called. ‘Tell me about the court. Are all the physicians there for the queen? And the midwives? Is everything ready?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘She is expected to have the child in the middle of March, next month, God willing.’

‘And do they say that she is well?’

He shook his head. ‘They say she is sick to her heart at the loss of Calais and the absence of her husband,’ he said. ‘The king has not said he will come to England for the birth of his son, so she has to face the travail of childbed all alone. And she is poorly served. All her fortune has been thrown away on her army and her servants have not even been paid and cannot buy food in the market. It is like a ghost court, and now she has gone into confinement there is no-one to watch over the courtiers at all.’

I felt a dreadful pang at the thought of her ill-served and me kicking my heels with Lady Amy Dudley, and doing nothing. ‘Who is with her?’

‘Only a handful of her ladies. No-one wants to be at court now.’

‘And the Princess Elizabeth?’

‘She rode in looking very grand,’ the messenger said. ‘Very taken with my lord.’