‘I would have to take my son,’ I temporised.

‘Take him,’ she nodded. ‘And see if you can find out from Elizabeth herself, or from her ladies, what Count Feria wanted with her.’

‘They may tell me nothing,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘Surely, they will know I serve you.’

‘You can ask,’ she said. ‘And you are the only friend that I can trust who will gain admission to Elizabeth. You have always passed between us. She likes you.’

‘Perhaps the ambassador was making nothing more than a courtesy visit.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But it may be that the king is pressing her to marry the Prince of Savoy. She has sworn to me that she will not have him but Elizabeth has no principles, she has only appearances. If the king promised to support her claim to be my heir, she might think it worth her while to marry his cousin. I have to know.’

‘When d’you want me to go?’ I asked unwillingly.

‘At first light tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And don’t write to me, I am surrounded by spies. I will wait for you to tell me what she is planning when you come back to me.’

Queen Mary released my arm and went on alone into dinner. As the noblemen and the gentry rose to their feet as she walked towards the high table in the great hall I noticed how small she seemed: a diminutive woman overwhelmed by her duties in a hostile world. I watched her step up to her throne, seat herself and look around her depleted court with her tight determined smile and thought—not for the first time—that she was the most courageous woman I had ever known. A woman with the worst luck in the world.

* * *

It was a merry ride to Hatfield for Danny and me. He rode the horse astride before me until he grew too tired, and then I strapped him to my back and he slept, rocked by the jolting. I had an escort of two men to keep me safe; since the epidemic of illness of the winter, and the hardship of one bad harvest after another, the roads were continually threatened by highwaymen, bandits, or just vagrants and beggars who would shout for money and threaten violence. But with the two men trotting behind us, Daniel and I were light-hearted. The weather was fine, the rain had stopped at last, and the sun was so hot by midday that we were pleased to break our fast in a field, sheltering in a wood, or sometimes by a river or stream. I let Danny paddle his feet, or sit bare-arsed in the water while it splashed around him. He was steady on his feet now, he made little rushes forward and back to me, and he continually demanded to be lifted upward to see more, to touch things, or simply to pat my face and turn my gaze this way and that.

As we rode I sang to him, the Spanish songs of my childhood, and I was certain that he heard me. His little hand would wave in time to the music, he would give a little wriggle of pleasure when I started singing, but he never joined in the tune. He remained as silent as a leveret in hiding, as a fawn in the bracken.