‘D’you see anything?’ Dee asked, I could hear the excitement in his voice.

‘I thought I saw my mother,’ I whispered.

He paused for a moment. ‘Can you hear her?’ he asked, his voice shaking.

I waited for a moment, longing with all my heart that she would come to me. But it was only my own face that looked back at me, my eyes enlarged and darkened by unshed tears.

‘She’s not here,’ I said sadly. ‘I would give anything to hear her voice, but I cannot. She has gone from me. I just thought that I saw her for a moment; but it is my own face in the mirror.’

‘I want you to close your eyes,’ he said, ‘and listen carefully to the prayer that I am going to read. When you say “amen” you can open your eyes again and tell me what you see. Are you ready?’

I closed my eyes and I could hear him softly blowing out the few candles illuminating the shadowy room. Behind me I was conscious of Lord Robert sitting quietly on a wooden chair. I wanted only to please him. ‘I am ready,’ I whispered.

It was a long prayer in Latin, I understood it despite Mr Dee’s English pronunciation of the words. It was a prayer for guidance and for the angels to come and protect the work we would do. I whispered ‘amen’ and then I opened my eyes.

The candles were all out. The mirror was a pool of darkness, black reflected in black, I could see nothing.

‘Show us when the king will die,’ Mr Dee whispered from behind me.

I watched, waiting for something to happen, my eyes staring into the blackness.

Nothing.

‘The day of the king’s death,’ Dee whispered again.

In truth, I could see nothing. I waited. Nothing came to me. How could it? I was not some sibyl on a Greek hillside, I was not some saint to whom mysteries were revealed. I stared into the darkness until my eyes grew hot and dry and I knew that far from being a holy fool I was a fool pure and simple, looking at nothing, at a reflection of nothing, while the greatest mind in the kingdom waited for my answer.

I had to say something. There was no going back and telling them that the Sight came to me so seldom and so unheralded that they would have done better to leave me leaning against the wall of my father’s shop. They knew who I was, they had promised me sanctuary from danger. They had bought me and now they expected some benefit for their bargain. I had to say something.

‘July,’ I said quietly, as good a reply as any.

‘Which year?’ Mr Dee prompted me, his voice silky and quiet.

Common sense alone suggested that the young king could not live much longer. ‘This year,’ I said unwillingly.

‘The day?’

‘The sixth,’ I whispered in reply, and I heard the scratch of Lord Robert’s pen as he recorded my mountebank prophecy.