Behind me, Lord Robert gave a snort of amusement.

I felt my colour rise slowly from my neck to my ear lobes to my temples. ‘I have no carnal desires,’ I said in a voice as low as a whisper. I did not dare to look at Lord Robert.

‘Then you will see true,’ John Dee said.

‘But I don’t understand,’ I protested. ‘Who is Jane? It is Lady Mary who will be queen if His Grace dies.’

Lord Robert put his finger on my lips and at once I was silent. ‘Sit down,’ he said and pressed me into a chair. He drew up a stool and sat beside me, his face close to mine. ‘Mistress Boy, you have seen today two things that would have us all hanged if they were known.’

My heart raced with fear. ‘My lord?’

‘Just by looking in the mirror you put us all in danger.’

My hand went to my cheek as if I would wipe away smuts from a fire. ‘My lord?’

‘You must say not a word of this. It is treason to cast the horoscope of a king, and the punishment for treason is death. You cast his horoscope today and you foretold the day of his death. D’you want to see me on the scaffold?’

‘No! I . . .’

‘Do you want to die yourself?’

‘No!’ I could hear a quaver in my voice. ‘My lord, I am afraid.’

‘Then never say one word of this to anyone. Not even to your father. As to the Jane of the mirror . . .’

I waited.

‘Just forget all you saw, forget I even asked you to look in the mirror. Forget the mirror, forget the room.’

I looked at him solemnly. ‘I won’t have to do it again?’

‘You will never have to do it again unless you consent. But you must forget it now.’ He gave me his sweet seductive smile. ‘Because I ask it of you,’ he whispered. ‘Because I ask it of you as your friend, I have put my life in your hands.’

I was lost. ‘All right,’ I said.

* * *

The court moved to Greenwich Palace in February and it was given out that the king was better. But he never asked for me, nor for Will Somers, he did not ask for music nor for company, nor did he ever come to the great hall for dinner. The physicians, who had been in full-blown attendance with their gowns flapping, waiting in every corner of the court, talking amongst themselves and giving carefully guarded replies to all inquiries, seemed to slip away as the days wore on and there was no news of his recovery, and not even their cheerful predictions about leeches cleansing the young man’s blood and poison carefully administered killing his disease, seemed to ring very true. Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, was all but king in Edward’s place, seated at the right hand of an empty throne at dinner, taking the chair at the head of the council table every week, but telling everyone that the king was well, getting better all the time, looking forward to the finer weather, planning a progress this summer.