‘Do you not know the Grey sisters?’

‘Hardly at all,’ I said. ‘They are the king’s cousins. They say that Lady Jane does not want to marry, she lives only to study her books. But her mother and her father have beaten her till she agreed.’

My father nodded, the forcible ordering of a daughter was no surprise. ‘And what else?’ he asked. ‘What of Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland?’

‘He’s very much disliked.’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘But he is like a king himself. He goes in and out of the king’s bedroom and says that this or that is the king’s own wish. What can anyone do against him?’

‘They took up our neighbour the portrait painter only last week,’ my father remarked. ‘Mr Tuller. They said he was a Catholic and a heretic. Took him off for questioning, and he has not come back. He had copied a picture of Our Lady some years ago, and someone searched a house and found it hidden, with his name signed at the foot.’ My father shook his head. ‘It makes no sense in law,’ he complained. ‘Whatever their conviction, it makes no sense. When he painted the picture it was allowed. Now it is heresy. When he painted the picture it was a work of art. Now it is a crime. The picture has not changed, it is the law which has changed and they apply the law to the years when it did not exist, before it was written. These people are barbarians. They lack all reason.’

We both glanced towards the door. The street was quiet, the door locked.

‘D’you think we should leave?’ I asked, very low. I realised for the first time that now I wanted to stay.

He chewed his bread, thinking. ‘Not yet,’ he said cautiously. ‘Besides, where could we go that was safe? I’d rather be in Protestant England than Catholic France. We are good reformed Christians now. You go to church, don’t you?’

‘Twice, sometimes three times a day,’ I assured him. ‘It’s a very observant court.’

‘I make sure I am seen to go. And I give to charity, and I pay my parish dues. We can do nothing more. We’ve both been baptised. What can any man say against us?’

I said nothing. We both knew that anyone could say anything against anyone. In the countries that had turned the ritual of the church into a burning matter no-one could be sure that they would not offend by the way they prayed, even by which direction they faced when they prayed.

‘If the king falls ill and dies,’ my father whispered, ‘then Lady Mary takes the throne, and she is a Roman Catholic. Will she make the whole country become Roman Catholic again?’

‘Who knows what will happen?’ I asked, thinking of my naming the next heir as ‘Jane’ and Robert Dudley’s lack of surprise. ‘I wouldn’t put a groat wager on Lady Mary coming to the throne. There are bigger players in this game than you and I, Father. And I don’t know what they are planning.’