‘Thank you,’ I said to Will.

‘He was a comfort to me,’ he said frankly.

‘You can stay, Will,’ Robert said. ‘Hannah is going to dine with me.’

‘I have no appetite,’ Will said. ‘I have seen so much sorrow in this country that my belly is full of it. I am sick of sorrow. I wish I could have a little joy for seasoning.’

‘Times will change,’ Robert said encouragingly. ‘Changing already.’

‘You’d be ready for new times, for one,’ Will said, his spirit rising up. ‘Since in the last reign you were one of the greatest lords and in this one you were a traitor waiting for the axe. I imagine change would be very welcome to you. What d’you hope from the next, my lord? What has the next queen promised you?’

I felt a little shiver sweep over me. It was the very question that Robert Dudley’s servant had posed, the very question that everyone was asking. What might not come to Robert, if Elizabeth adored him?

‘Nothing but good for the country,’ Robert said easily with a pleasant smile. ‘Come and dine with us, Will. You’re among friends.’

‘All right,’ he said, seating himself at the table and drawing a bowl towards him. I hitched Danny on to the chair beside me so that he could eat from my bowl and I took a glass of wine that Lord Robert poured for me.

‘Here’s to us,’ Robert said, raising his glass in an ironic toast. ‘A heartbroken queen, an absent king, a lost baby, a queen in waiting and two fools and a reformed traitor. Here’s health.’

‘Two fools and an old traitor,’ Will said, raising his glass. ‘Three fools together.’

SUMMER 1558

Almost by default, I found myself back in the queen’s service. She was so anxious and suspicious of everyone around her that she would be served only by people who had been with her from the earliest days. She hardly seemed to notice that I had been away from her for more than two years, and was now a woman grown, and dressed like a woman. She liked to hear me read to her in Spanish, and she liked me to sit by her bed while she slept. The deep sadness that had invaded her with the failure of her second pregnancy meant that she had no curiosity about me. I told her that my father had died, that I had married my betrothed, and that we had a child. She was interested only that my husband and I were separated—he in France, safe, I hoped, while I was in England. I did not name the town of Calais, she was as mortified by the loss of the town, England’s glory, as she was shamed by the loss of the baby.

‘How can you bear not to be with your husband?’ she asked suddenly, after three long hours of silence one grey afternoon.

‘I miss him,’ I said, startled at her suddenly speaking to me. ‘But I hope to find him again. I will go to France as soon as it is possible, I will go and look for him. Or I hope he will come to me. If you would help me send a message it would ease my heart.’