‘And what else?’

I hesitated. My duty to be honest to the queen and my desire not to hurt her seemed to be in utter conflict. I had puzzled about this for all of the ride back to court and I had decided that I should be as faithless as the rest of them. I could not bring myself to tell her that her own husband was proposing marriage to her own sister.

‘He was pressing the suit of the Duke of Savoy,’ I said. ‘Elizabeth herself assured me that she would not marry him.’

‘The Duke of Savoy?’ she asked.

I nodded.

The queen reached out her hand and I took it and waited, not knowing what she would say to me. ‘Hannah, you have been my friend for many years, and a true friend, I think.’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Hannah, sometimes I think I have run mad, quite mad, with jealousy and unhappiness.’

Her dark eyes filled with tears. I held tightly to her hand. ‘What is it?’

‘I am doubting him. I am doubting my own husband. I am doubting our marriage vows. If I doubt this then my world will fall apart, and yet I do doubt.’

I did not know what to say. Her grip on my hand was painful but I did not flinch. ‘Queen Mary?’

‘Hannah, answer me a question and then I will never think of this again. But answer me truly, and tell no-one.’

I gulped, wondering what terror was opening up beneath my feet. ‘I will, Your Grace.’ Inwardly I promised myself that if the question endangered me, or Danny, or my lord; I would allow myself to lie. The familiar tremor of fear of court life was making my heart flutter, I could hear it pounding in my ears. The queen was white as a shroud, her eyes madly intent.

‘Was there any suggestion that the king was pressing his own suit?’ she whispered, so low that I could hardly hear her. ‘Even though he is my husband, even though he is forsworn before God, the Pope, and our two kingdoms? Please tell me, Hannah. I know that it is the question of a madwoman. I know that I am his wife and he could not be doing this. But I have become filled with the thought that he is courting her, not as a pastime, not as a flirtation: but for his wife. I have to know. I am tortured by this fear.’

I bit my lip, and she needed nothing more. With the quick apprehension of a woman seeing her worst fear, she knew it at once.

‘Dear God, it is so,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought that my suspicion of him was part of my illness, but it is not. I can see it on your face. He is courting my sister for marriage. My own sister? And my own husband?’

I clasped her cold hand between my own. ‘Your Grace, this is a matter of policy for the king,’ I said. ‘Like making a will to provide for the future. He has to provide in the case of your accident or death. He is trying to secure England for Spain. It is his duty to keep England safe, and in the true faith. And if you were to die, sometime in the future, if he were to marry Elizabeth after your death then England would remain Roman Catholic—and that is what you and he wanted to secure.’