His dull gaze went first to Danny and then to me. He did not recognise me. ‘Mistress, I can do nothing for you,’ he said shortly, and turned his head away. ‘I have no spirits for jests today, I could only manage the lowest of humour, for I am very low myself.’

‘Will, it’s me.’

At my voice he paused and looked at me more closely. ‘Hannah? Hannah the Fool? Hannah, the Invisible Fool?’

I nodded at the implied reproach. ‘Will, what has happened?’

He did not remark on my clothes, on my child, on anything. ‘It’s the queen,’ he said.

‘Oh, Will, she’s not dead?’

He shook his head. ‘Not yet. But it can only be a matter of time.’

‘The baby?’ I asked with a swift sure painful knowledge.

‘It’s happened again,’ he said. ‘There was no baby. Again. And again she is the laughing stock of Europe and the mistress of her own humiliation.’

Without thinking I stretched out my hands to him for comfort and he gripped them tightly.

‘Is she ill?’ I whispered after a moment.

‘Her women say that she will not rise up from the floor,’ he said. ‘She sits, hunched on the floorboards, more like a beggar woman than a queen. I don’t know how it can have happened, Hannah. I don’t know how it can have come about. When I think of her as a child, so bright and bonny, when I think of the care her mother gave her, and her father adoring her and calling her his own, his best Princess of Wales, and now this miserable ending . . . what will happen next?’

‘Why? What will happen next?’ I repeated, aghast.

He hunched a shoulder and gave me a crooked sad smile. ‘Nothing much here,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s at Hatfield that it will all happen. There is the heir, clearly, we can’t make one here. We’ve had two tries at an heir here and all we get is wind. Not the right sort of air at all. But at Hatfield—why, there is half her court already, and the rest rushing to join them. She’ll have her speech ready, I don’t doubt. She’ll be all prepared for the day when they tell her that the queen is dead and she is the new queen. She’ll have it all planned, where she will sit and what she will say.’

‘You’re right.’ I shared his bitterness. ‘And she has her speech ready. She’s going to say: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes”.’

Will gave a bitter crow of laughter. ‘Good God! She is a marvellous princess. How d’you know that? How d’you know she’s going to say that?’

I could feel a gurgle of laughter in my throat. ‘Oh, Will! She asked me what the queen was going to say at her accession, and when I told her she thought it so good she would use it herself.’

‘Well, why not?’ he asked, suddenly bitter again. ‘She will have taken everything else. Queen Mary’s own husband, the people’s love, the throne, and now the very words out of her sister’s mouth.’