‘His name is on this list.’ He flicked the paper at me. ‘Soldiers to be ransomed, townspeople who are to be returned to England. The whole of the English Pale outside Calais is to come home. If the queen can find some money in the treasury we can get them all back where they belong.’

I could feel my heart thudding. ‘There is no money in the treasury,’ I said. ‘The country is all but ruined.’

He shrugged. ‘There is money to keep the fleet waiting to escort the king home. There is money for his adventures abroad. Mention it to her as she dresses for dinner tonight, and I will speak with her after dinner.’

* * *

I waited until the queen had dragged herself up from her bed and was seated before her mirror, her maid behind her brushing her hair. Jane Dormer, who was usually such a fierce guardian of the queen’s privacy, had taken the fever herself, and was lying down. It was just the queen and I and some unimportant girl from the Norfolk family.

‘Your Grace,’ I said simply. ‘I have had news of my husband.’

She turned her dull gaze on me. ‘I had forgotten you are married. Is he alive?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He is among the English men and women hoping to be ransomed out of Calais.’

She was only slightly more interested. ‘Who is arranging this?’

‘Lord Robert. His men have been held captive too.’

The queen sighed and turned her head away. ‘Are they asking very much?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said frankly.

‘I will speak with Lord Robert,’ she said, as if she were very weary. ‘I will do what I can for you and your husband, Hannah.’

I knelt before her. ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’

When I looked up I saw that she was exhausted. ‘I wish I could bring my husband home so easily,’ she said. ‘But I don’t believe he will ever come home to me again.’

* * *

The queen was too ill to transact the business herself, the fever was always worse after dinner and she could barely breathe for coughing; but she scrawled an assent on a bill on the Treasury for money and Lord Robert assured me that the business would go through. We met in the stable-yard, he was riding to Hatfield and in a hurry to be off.

‘Will he come to you here at court?’ he asked casually.

I hesitated, I had not thought of the details of our meeting. ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I should leave a message for him at his old house, and at my old shop in Fleet Street.’

I said nothing more, but a deeper worry was starting to dawn on me. What if Daniel’s love for me had not grown, like mine, in absence? What if he had decided that I was dead and that he should make a new life elsewhere in Italy or France as he had so often said? Worse than that: what if he thought I had run away with Lord Robert and chosen a life of shame without him? What if he had cast me off?