But this joke was no more successful than his bluster, since in Elizabeth’s imagination the throne and the scaffold were always close neighbours. The colour drained from her face, leaving her sallow with fear.

‘Who is she?’ Her voice was sharp with nervousness. ‘Who is she working for?’

He turned to look for the child but the allée was empty. At the distant end of it he could see his wife walking slowly towards them, her back arched to carry the pregnant curve of her belly.

‘Not a word,’ he said quickly to the girl at his side. ‘Not a word of this, sweetheart. You don’t want to upset your stepmother.’

He hardly needed to warn her. At the first hint of danger the girl was wary, smoothing her dress, conscious always that she must play a part, that she must survive. He could always rely on Elizabeth’s duplicity. She might be only fourteen but she had been trained in deceit every day since the death of her mother, she had been an apprentice cheat for twelve long years. And she was the daughter of a liar—two liars, he thought spitefully. She might feel desire; but she was always more alert to danger or ambition than to lust. He took her cold hand and led her up the allée towards his wife Katherine. He tried for a merry smile. ‘I caught her at last!’ he called out.

He glanced around, he could not see the child anywhere. ‘We had such a race!’ he cried.

* * *

I was that child, and that was the first sight I ever had of the Princess Elizabeth: damp with desire, panting with lust, rubbing herself like a cat against another woman’s husband. But it was the first and last time I saw Tom Seymour. Within a year, he was dead on the scaffold charged with treason, and Elizabeth had denied three times having anything more than the most common acquaintance with him.

WINTER 1552–53

‘I remember this!’ I said excitedly to my father, turning from the rail of the Thames barge as we tacked our way upstream. ‘Father! I remember this! I remember these gardens running down to the water, and the great houses, and the day you sent me to deliver some books to the lord, the English lord, and I came upon him in the garden with the princess.’

He found a smile for me, though his face was weary from our long journey. ‘Do you, child?’ he asked quietly. ‘That was a happy summer for us. She said . . .’ He broke off. We never mentioned my mother’s name, even when we were alone. At first it had been a precaution to keep us safe from those who had killed her and would come after us, but now we were hiding from grief as well as from the Inquisition; and grief was an inveterate stalker.

‘Will we live here?’ I asked hopefully, looking at the beautiful riverside palaces and the level lawns. I was eager for a new home after years of travelling.