I stood, my back to the fire. ‘I wish I had done,’ I said sadly. ‘I would have done anything to save you from being here.’

‘And shall I stay here till I rot?’ he asked quietly. ‘Can you foresee that for me? Some nights I hear the rats skitter on the floor and I think, this is all I will ever hear, this square of blue sky through the window will be all I ever see. She will not behead me, but she will cut off my youth.’

In silence, I shook my head. ‘I listen and listen, and once I asked her directly. She said that she wanted no blood spilt that could be spared. She won’t execute you and she must let you go free when Lady Jane goes free.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were her,’ he said quietly. ‘If I were her, I would rid myself of Elizabeth, of Jane, of my brother and of me; and name Mary Stuart as the next heir, French or not. One clean cut. That’s the only way to get this country back into the Papist church and keep it there, and soon she will realise it. She has to wipe us out, this generation of Protestant plotters. If she does not she will have to cut off one head after another and watch others rise.’

I crossed the room and stood behind him. Timidly I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at me as if he had forgotten my presence. ‘And you?’ he asked gently. ‘Safe in royal service now?’

‘I am never safe,’ I said in a low voice. ‘You know why. I never can be safe. I never can feel safe. I love the queen and no-one questions who I am or where I have come from. I am known as her fool, as if I had been with her all my life. I should feel safe, but I always feel as if I am creeping across thin ice.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll take your secret with me to the scaffold if I go that way,’ he promised. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, child. And I have told no-one who you were or where you came from.’

I nodded. When I looked up he was watching me, his dark eyes warm. ‘You’ve grown, Mistress Boy,’ he remarked. ‘Soon be a woman. I shall be sorry not to see it.’

I had nothing to say. I stood dumbly before him. He smiled as if he knew only too well the churn of my emotions. ‘Ah, little fool. I should have left you in your father’s shop that day, and not drawn you into this.’

‘My father told me to bid you farewell.’

‘Aye, he is right. You can leave me now. I will release you from your promise to love me. You are no longer my vassal. I let you go.’

It was little more than a joke to him. He knew as well as I did that you cannot release a girl from her promise to love a man. She either gets herself free or she is bound for life.