Dear Husband,

Living here, in the saddest court in Christendom with a queen who has never done anything but what she believed to be right and yet has been betrayed by everyone in the world that she loved, even those who were sworn before God to love her, I think of you and your long years of faithfulness to me. And I pray that one day we can be together again and you will see that I have learned to value love and to value fidelity; and to love and be faithful in return.

Your wife

Hannah Carpenter.

Then I took the page, kissed his name at the top, and dropped it in the fire.

* * *

The court was due to leave for Whitehall Palace in August. The usual progress had been abandoned for the queen’s pregnancy, and now that there was no child it was almost as if she had abandoned the summer as well. Certainly there was no good weather to invite the court into the country. It was cold and raining every day, the harvest would be bad again and there would be starvation up and down the land. It would be another bad year of Mary’s reign, another year when God did not smile on England.

There was less fuss about moving than usual; there were fewer people travelling with the queen this year, fewer than ever before, and they had fewer goods, and hangers-on. The court was shrinking.

‘Where is everybody?’ I asked Will, bringing my horse beside his as we rode into the city at the head of the court train, just behind the queen in her litter.

‘Hatfield,’ he growled crossly.

The change of air did nothing for the queen, who complained that very night of a fever. She did not dine in the great hall of Whitehall Palace but took to her room and had two or three dishes brought to her. She hardly ate at all. I went past the great hall on my way to her chambers and stopped to glance in the door. For a moment I had a sudden powerful picture in my mind, almost as bright as a seeing: the empty throne, the greedily eating court, the ladies unsupervised, the servants kneeling to the empty throne and serving the royal dinner to the absent monarch on plates that would never be touched. It had been like this when I had first come to court, five years ago. But then it had been King Edward, sick and neglected in his rooms while the court made merry. Now it was my Queen Mary.

I stepped back and bumped into a man walking behind me. I turned with an apology. It was John Dee.

‘Dr Dee!’ My heart thudded with fright. I dropped him a curtsey.

‘Hannah Green,’ he said, bowing over my hand. ‘How are you? And how is the queen?’

I glanced around to see that no-one was in earshot. ‘Ill,’ I said. ‘Very hot, aching in all her bones, weeping eyes and running nose. Sad.’