‘That poor girl should be abed,’ one woman said clearly to the closing door.

‘Indeed,’ the queen said to herself.

WINTER 1553

It was as dark as midnight, though it was still only six in the evening, the mist peeling like a black shroud off the corpse of the cold river. The smell in my nostrils was the scent of despair from the massive wet weeping walls of the Tower of London, surely the most gloomy palace that any monarch ever built. I presented myself to the postern gate and the guard held up a flaming torch to see my white face.

‘A young lad,’ he concluded.

‘I’ve got books to deliver to Lord Robert,’ I said.

He withdrew the torch and the darkness flooded over me, then the creak of the hinges warned me that he was opening the gate outward and I stepped back to let the big wet timbers swing open, and then I stepped forward to go in.

‘Let me see them,’ he said.

I proffered the books readily enough. They were works of theology defending the Papist point of view, licensed by the Vatican and authorised by the queen’s own council.

‘Go through,’ the guard said.

I walked on the slippery cobblestones to the guardhouse, and from there along a causeway, the rank mud shining in the moonlight on either side, and then up a flight of wooden steps to the high doorway in the fortress wall of the white tower. If there was an attack or a rescue attempt, the soldiers inside could just kick the outside steps away, and they were unreachable. No-one could get my lord out.

Another soldier was waiting in the doorway. He led me inside and then rapped at an inner door and swung it open to admit me.

At last I saw him, my Lord Robert, leaning over his papers, a candle at his elbow, the golden light shining on his dark head, on his pale skin, and then the slow-dawning radiance of his smile.

‘Mistress Boy! Oh! My Mistress Boy!’

I dropped to one knee. ‘My lord!’ was all I could say before I burst into tears.

He laughed, pulled me to my feet, put his arm around my shoulders, wiped my face, all in one dizzying caress. ‘Come now, child, come now. What’s wrong?’

‘It’s you!’ I gulped. ‘You being here. And you look so . . .’ I could not bear to say ‘pale’, ‘ill’, ‘tired’, ‘defeated’, but all those words were true. ‘Imprisoned,’ I found at last. ‘And your lovely clothes! And . . . and what’s going to happen now?’

He laughed as if none of it mattered, and led me over to the fire, seated himself on a chair and pulled up a stool so that I was facing him, like a favourite nephew. Timidly, I reached forward and put my hands on his knees. I wanted to touch him to be sure that he was real. I had dreamed of him so often, and now he was here before me; unchanged but for the deep lines scored on his face by defeat and disappointment.