I shook my head but my throat was too tight to speak.

‘It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What d’you choose to do with yours?’

‘I could serve you.’

He took one of my cold hands and took it up to his lips. Entranced, I felt his mouth touch the tips of my fingers, a touch as intimate as any kiss on the lips. My own mouth softened, in a little pursed shape of longing, as if I would have him kiss me, there, in the courtyard before them all.

‘Yes,’ he said gently, not raising his head but whispering against my fingers. ‘You could serve me. A loving servant is a great gift for any man. Will you be mine, Mistress Boy? Heart and soul? And do whatever I ask of you?’

His moustache brushed against my hand, as soft as the breast feathers of his hawk.

‘Yes,’ I said, hardly grasping the enormity of my promise.

‘Whatever I ask of you?’

‘Yes.’

At once he straightened up, suddenly decisive. ‘Good. Then I have a new post for you, new work.’

‘Not at court?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘You begged me to the king,’ I reminded him. ‘I am his fool.’

His mouth twisted in a moment’s pity. ‘The poor lad won’t miss you,’ he said. ‘I shall tell you all of it. Come to Greenwich tomorrow, with the rest of them, and I’ll tell you then.’

He laughed at himself as if the future was an adventure that he wanted to start at once. ‘Come to Greenwich tomorrow,’ he threw over his shoulder as he strode towards his horse. His groom cupped his hands for his master’s boot and Lord Robert vaulted up into the high saddle of his hunter. I watched him turn his horse and clatter out of the stable-yard, into the Strand and then towards the cold English morning sun. His father followed behind at a more sober pace, and I saw that as they passed, although all the men pulled off their hats and bent their heads to show the respect that the duke commanded, their faces were sour.

* * *

I clattered into the courtyard of the palace at Greenwich riding astride one of the carthorses pulling the wagon with supplies. It was a beautiful spring day, the fields running down to the river were a sea of gold and silver daffodils, and they reminded me of Mr Dee’s desire to turn base metal to gold. As I paused, feeling the warmer breeze against my face, one of the Dudley servants shouted towards me: ‘Hannah the Fool?’

‘Yes?’

‘To go to Lord Robert and his father in their privy rooms at once. At once, lad!’

I nodded and went into the palace at a run, past the royal chambers to the ones that were no less grand, guarded by soldiers in the Dudley livery. They swung open the double doors for me and I was in the presence room where the duke would hear the petitions of common people. I went through another set of doors, and another, the rooms getting smaller and more intimate, until the last double doors opened, and there was Lord Robert leaning over a desk with a manuscript scroll spread out before him, his father looking over his shoulder. I recognised at once that it was Mr Dee’s writing, and that it was a map that he had made partly from ancient maps of Britain borrowed from my father, and partly from calculations of his own based on the sailors’ charts of the coastline. Mr Dee had prepared the map because he believed that England’s greatest fortune were the seas around the coast; but the duke was using it for a different purpose.