‘What a handsome boy,’ the woman said, looking down at Danny who was holding my hand and standing at my side. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Dan’l,’ he said, thumping his chest with his fist.

She smiled at me. ‘A forward child,’ she said. ‘His father won’t recognise him.’

‘I hope he will,’ I said a little breathlessly. If he had not received my letter, Daniel would not even know that I had his son safely with me. If he came to me on his release, our whole life as a family could start again. ‘I certainly hope he will,’ I repeated.

* * *

When I got back to court there was a scurry around the queen’s apartments. She had collapsed while dressing for dinner and been put to bed. The doctors had been called and were bleeding her. Quietly, I handed Danny to Will Somers who was in the privy chamber, and I went inside the guarded doors to the queen’s bedchamber.

Jane Dormer, white as a sheet and visibly ill herself, was at the head of the bed, holding the queen’s hand as the physicians were picking fat leeches off her legs and dropping them back into their glass jar. The queen’s thin legs were bruised where their vile mouths had been fixed on her, the maid twitched down the sheet. The queen’s eyes were closed in shame at being so exposed, her head turned away from the anxious faces of her physicians. The doctors bowed and got themselves out of the room.

‘Go to bed, Jane,’ the queen said weakly. ‘You are as sick as I am.’

‘Not until I have seen Your Grace take some soup.’

The queen shook her head and waved her hand to the door. Jane curtseyed and went out, leaving the queen and I alone.

‘Is that you, Hannah?’ she asked without opening her eyes.

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘Will you write a letter for me, in Spanish? And send it to the king without showing it to anyone?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

I took some paper and a pen from the table, drew up a little stool and sat beside her bed. She dictated to me in English and I translated it into Spanish as I wrote. The sentences were long and fluent, I knew that she had been waiting a long time to send him this letter. In all the nights when she had wept for him, she had composed this letter to be sent from her deathbed, knowing that he was far away, joyously living his life in the Netherlands, courted by women, fawned on by men, and planning marriage with her sister. She wrote him a letter like the one her mother wrote to her father from her deathbed: a letter of love and constancy to a man who had offered nothing but heartache.

Dearest Husband,

Since it has pleased you to stay far from me in my illness and my sorrow, I write to you these words which I wish I might have said to your beloved face.

You could not have had and never will have a more loving and faithful wife. The sight of you gladdened my heart every day that we were together, my only regret is that we spent so much time apart.

It seems very hard to me that I should face death as I have faced life: alone and without the one I love. I pray that you will never know the loneliness that has walked step by step with me every day of my life. You still have a loving parent to advise you, you have a loving wife who wanted nothing more than to be at your side. No-one will ever love you more.

They will not tell me, but I know that I am near to death. This may be my last chance to bid you farewell and to send you my love. May we meet in heaven, though we could not be together on earth, prays

Your wife

Mary R.