‘What d’you think, Hannah the Fool?’ the Duke of Northumberland shouted down the hall to me. ‘Shall she be a lucky bride?’

My neighbours turned to me, and I felt the old swimming sensation that was a sign of the Sight coming. I tried to fight it off, this court would be the worst place in the world to tell the truth. I could not stop the words coming. ‘Never more lucky than today,’ I said.

Lord Robert flashed a cautionary look at me but I could not take back the words. I had spoken as I felt, not with the skill of a courtier. My sense was that Jane’s luck, at a low ebb when she married with a bruise on her throat, would now run ever more swiftly downhill. But the duke took it as a compliment to his son and laughed at me, and raised his goblet. Guilford, little more than a dolt, beamed at his mother, while Lord Robert shook his head, and half-closed his eyes, as if he wished he was elsewhere.

There was dancing, and a bride had to dance at her own wedding, though Lady Jane sat in her chair, as stubborn as a white mule. Lord Robert led her gently to the dance floor. I saw him whisper to her and she found a wan little smile and put her hand in his. I wondered what he was saying to cheer her. In the moments when the dancers paused and awaited their turn in the circle his mouth was so close to her ear that I thought she must feel the warmth of his breath on her bare neck. I watched without envy. I did not long to be her, with his long fingers holding my hand, or his dark eyes on my face. I gazed on them as I might look on a pair of beautiful portraits, his face turned to her as sharp as a hawk’s beak in profile, her pallor warming under his kindness.

The court danced until late, as if there were great joy from such weddings, and then the three couples were taken to their bedrooms and put to bed with much throwing of rose petals and sprinkling of rose water. But it was all show, no more real than Will and I fighting with wooden swords. None of the marriages was to be consummated yet, and the next day Lady Jane went home with her parents to Suffolk Place, Guilford Dudley went home with his mother, complaining of stomach ache and bloating, and Lord Robert and the duke were up early to return to the king at Greenwich.

‘Why does your brother not make a house with his wife?’ I asked Lord Robert. I met him at the gateway of the stable-yard, and he waited beside me while they brought out his great horse.

‘Well, it is not unusual. I do not live with mine,’ he remarked.

I saw the roofs of Durham House tilt against the sky, as I staggered back and held on to the wall till the world steadied again. ‘You have a wife?’