‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Don’t get up till your head is clear.’

She sat beside me on the grass and gently put my head in her lap. The morning sunshine was warm, the garden buzzed with the sleepy noise of bees and the distant haunting call of a cuckoo. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said.

I wanted to sleep as she held me. ‘I am not a spy,’ I said.

Her finger touched my lips. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I know that you work for the Dudleys. And I know you are a good girl. Who better than I to understand a life of complicated loyalties? You need not fear, little Hannah. I understand.’

I felt her soft touch on my hair, she wound my short-cropped curls around her finger. I felt my eyes close and the sinews of my back and neck unknot as I realised I was safe with her.

She, in her turn, was far away in the past. ‘I used to sit like this when Elizabeth took her afternoon nap,’ she said. ‘She would rest her head in my lap and I would plait her hair while she slept. She had hair of bronze and copper and gold, all the colours of gold in one curl. She was such a pretty child, she had that shining innocence of children. And I was only twenty. I used to pretend to myself that she was my baby, and that I was happily married to a man who loved me, and that soon we would have another baby—a son.’

We sat in silence for long moments, and then I heard the door of the house bang open. I sat up and saw one of Lady Mary’s ladies burst out of the shadowy interior and look wildly around for her. Lady Mary waved and the girl ran over. It was Lady Margaret. As she came close I felt Lady Mary’s posture rise, her back straighten, she steadied herself for the news I had foretold. She would let her companion find her here, seated simply in the English garden, her fool dozing beside her, and she would greet the news of her inheritance with words from the Psalms that she had prepared. She whispered them now: ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.’

‘Lady Mary! Oh!’

The girl was almost speechless with her desire to tell, and breathless from her run. ‘At church just now . . .’

‘What?’

‘They didn’t pray for you.’

‘Pray for me?’

‘No. They prayed for the king and his advisors, same as always, but where the prayer says “and for the king’s sisters”, they missed you out.’

Lady Mary’s bright gaze swept the girl’s face. ‘Both of us? Elizabeth too?’

‘Yes!’

‘You are sure?’

‘Yes.’

Lady Mary rose to her feet, her eyes narrowed with anxiety. ‘Send out Mr Tomlinson into Ware, tell him to go on to Bishop Stortford if need be, tell him to get reports from other churches. See if this is happening everywhere.’