I thought for a moment, I could not forget that the last time I had seen him he had been advising Bishop Bonner. I remembered the woman who had cupped her torn fingers in her lap. I remembered the smell of urine in the little room and the wet warmth in my breeches, and my shame. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ I said, my voice very small.

Robert Dudley heard the constraint in my tone and looked quickly from me to his friend. ‘How now?’ he asked sharply. ‘What’s this?’

Dr Dee and I exchanged an odd complicit glance: that of the secret torturer to his unproclaimed victim, that of a horror shared. He said nothing.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Odd sort of nothing,’ Lord Robert said, his tone hardening. ‘You tell me, John.’

‘She was brought before Bonner,’ John Dee said briefly. ‘Heresy. I was there. The charges were dismissed. She was released.’

‘My God, you must have pissed yourself, Hannah!’ Robert exclaimed.

He hit the mark so precisely that my cheeks burned red and I gripped Daniel’s son against me.

John Dee shot a brief apologetic look at me. ‘We were all afraid,’ he said. ‘But in this world, we all do what we have to do, Robert. We all do the best we can. Sometimes we wear masks, sometimes we can be ourselves, sometimes the masks are truer than the faces. Hannah betrayed no-one and was clearly innocent herself. She was released. That’s all.’

Lord Robert leaned over and gripped Bishop Bonner’s most orthodox, most rigorous chaplain by the hand. ‘That’s all indeed. I would not have wanted her racked, she knows much too much. I am glad you were there.’

John Dee did not glow in return. ‘No-one was there by choice,’ he said. ‘There were more innocents than this one that went to be scourged and burned.’

I looked from one man to the other, wondering where the allegiances truly lay. At least now I knew enough not to ask, and not to trust any answer.

Lord Robert turned back to me. ‘And so do you have your gift still, even though you have lost your virginity?’

‘It comes so rarely that it is hard to tell. But I had a true seeing in Calais, after my wedding: I foresaw the horsemen riding through the streets.’ I shut my eyes against the memory.

‘You saw the French coming into Calais?’ Lord Robert asked incredulously. ‘Dear God, why didn’t you warn me?’

‘I would have done if I had known what it was,’ I replied. ‘Don’t doubt me. I would have come at once if I could have understood what I was seeing. But it was so unclear. It was a woman being cut down as she ran from them and calling out . . .’ I broke off. I would not tell even these trusted men that she called me to take her son. Danny was mine now. ‘God knows I would have warned that woman . . . even though . . . I would not want anyone to suffer that death.’