John Dee went down the steps, mounted his horse, raised his hat to her ladyship, smiled at me, and the two men rode away.

As she watched them go I could feel the anger and resentment towards him bleeding out of her like a wound until all that was left was the hurt and the injury. She stood straight until they rounded the corner of the park and then she buckled at the knees and Mrs Oddingsell took her arm to lead her inside and up the stairs to her chamber.

‘What now?’ I asked when Mrs Oddingsell came out, carefully shutting the door behind her.

‘Now she will weep and sleep for a few days and then she will get up and be like a woman half-dead: cold and empty inside, no tears to shed, no anger, no love to give. And then she will be like a hound on a short leash until he comes back, and then her anger will spill out again.’

‘Over and over?’ I asked, inwardly horrified at this cycle of pain and anger.

‘Over and over again,’ she said. ‘The only time she was at peace was when she thought they would behead him. Then she could grieve for him and for herself and for the love they had shared when they were young.’

‘She wanted him to die?’ I asked incredulously.

‘She is not afraid of death,’ Mrs Oddingsell said sadly. ‘I think she longs for it, for them both. What other release can there be for them?’

SPRING 1558

I waited for news from court, but I could hear nothing except common gossip. The baby which was due in March was late, and by April people were starting to say that the queen had made a mistake again, and there was no child. I found myself on my knees in the Philipses’ little chapel every morning and evening, praying before a statue of Our Lady that the queen might be with child and that she might be, even now, in childbirth. I could not imagine how she would be able to bear it if she were to be once more disappointed. I knew her for a courageous woman, no woman braver in the world, but to come out of the confinement chamber for the second time and tell the world that once again it had been a ten-month mistake and there was no baby—I could not see how any woman could bear the humiliation of it, least of all the Queen of England with every eye in Europe on her.

The gossip about her was all malice. People said that she had pretended to be pregnant on purpose to try to bring her husband home, people said that she had plans to smuggle in a secret baby and pass him off as a Roman Catholic prince for England. I did not even defend her against the spiteful whispers that I heard every day. I knew her, as none of them did, and I knew that she was utterly incapable of lying to her husband, or lying to her people. She was utterly determined to do right by her God, and that would always come first for her. The queen adored Philip and would have done almost anything in the world to have him by her side. But she would never have sinned for him nor for any man. She would never deny her God.