I said nothing. I was being paid as a fool to say surprising and impertinent things but I could think of nothing more impertinent and surprising than the truth—that the young king was half-prisoner to his protector, that he was dying without companions or nursing, and that this whole court, every great man in the land, was thinking of the crown and not of the boy; and that it was a great cruelty, to a boy only a little older than me and without a mother or a father to care for him, to be left to die alone. I looked around me at the men who assured each other that the young man of fifteen, coughing his lungs out in hiding, would be fit to take a wife this summer, and I thought that I would be a fool indeed if I did not see that they were a bunch of liars and rogues.

While the young king vomited black bile in his chamber, the men outside quietly helped themselves to the pensions, to the fees from offices, to the rents from monasteries that they closed for piety and then robbed for greed, and no-one said one word against it. I would have been a fool indeed to tell the truth in this court of liars, I would have been as incongruous as an angel in Fleet Street. I kept my head down, I sat near Will Somers at dinner, and I kept silent.

I had new work to do. Lord Robert’s tutor Mr Dee sought me out and asked if I would read with him. His eyes were tired, he said, and my father had sent him some manuscripts that could be more easily deciphered by young sight.

‘I don’t read very well,’ I said cautiously.

He was pacing ahead of me in one of the sunny galleries overlooking the river, but at my words he turned and smiled.

‘You are a very careful young woman,’ he said. ‘And that is wise in these changing times. But you are safe with me and with Lord Robert. I imagine you can read English and Latin fluently, am I right?’

I nodded.

‘And Spanish, of course, and perhaps French?’

I kept my silence. It was obvious that I spoke and read Spanish as my native tongue, and he would guess that I must have picked up some French during our stay in Paris.

Mr Dee came a little closer and bent his head to whisper in my ear. ‘Can you read Greek? I need someone who can read Greek for me.’

If I had been older and wiser I would have denied my knowledge. But I was only fourteen and proud of my abilities. My mother herself had taught me to read Greek and Hebrew, and my Father called me his little scholar, as good as any boy.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can read Greek and Hebrew.’

‘Hebrew?’ he exclaimed, his interest sharpened. ‘Dear God, child, what have you seen in Hebrew? Have you seen the Torah?’