* * *

For a little while the queen seemed better, away from the city. She walked by the river with me in the mornings or in the evenings; she could not tolerate the brightness of midday. But Hampton Court was filled with ghosts. It was on these paths and in these gardens where she had walked with Philip when they were newly married and Cardinal Pole newly come from Rome and the whole of Christendom stretched before them. It was here that she had whispered to him that she was with child, and gone into her first confinement, certain of her happiness, confident of having a son. And it was here that she came out from her confinement, childless and ill, and saw Elizabeth growing in beauty and exulting in her triumph, another step closer to the throne.

‘I feel no better here at all,’ she said to me one day as Jane Dormer and I came in to say goodnight. She had gone to bed early again, almost doubled-up with pain from the ache in her belly and feverishly hot. ‘We will go to St James’ Palace next week. We will spend Christmas there. The king likes St James’.’

Jane Dormer and I exchanged one silent glance. We did not think that King Philip would come home to his wife for Christmas when he had not come home when she had lost their child, when he had not come home when she wrote to him that she was so sick that she did not see how to bear to live.

* * *

As we had feared it was a depleted court at St James’ Palace. My Lord Robert had bigger and better rooms not because his star was rising, but simply because there were fewer men at court. I saw him at dinner on some days but generally he was at Hatfield, where the princess kept a merry circle about her and a constant stream of visitors flocked to her door.

They were not always playing games at the old palace either. They were planning how the country would be ruled by the princess when she came to her throne. And if I knew Elizabeth, and my Lord Robert, they would be wondering how soon it might be.

Lord Robert saw me only rarely; but he had not forgotten me. He came looking for me, one day in September. ‘I have done you a great favour, I think,’ he said with his charming smile. ‘Are you still in love with your husband, Mrs Carpenter? Or shall we abandon him in Calais?’

‘You have news of him?’ I asked. I put my hand down and felt Danny’s hand creep into my own.

‘I might have,’ he said provocatively. ‘But you have not answered my question. Do you want him home in England, or shall we forget all about him?’

‘I cannot jest about this, and especially not before his son,’ I said. ‘I want him home, my lord. Please tell me, do you have news of him?’