I wrenched myself from his grip, pulling away from his hard unsympathetic eyes, and started to trudge for home. After a few moments I heard him come after me.

‘Would you be weeping like this if it had been Queen Mary in there, with her head on the block?’ he asked.

‘Ssshhh,’ I said, always cautious. ‘Yes.’

He said nothing, but his silence showed his great scepticism.

‘I have done nothing dishonourable,’ I said flatly.

‘I doubt you,’ he said, as coldly as me. ‘If you have been honourable it has only been for lack of opportunity.’

‘Whoreson,’ I said under my breath so he could not hear, and he marched me home in silence and we parted at my doorway with a handshake which was neither cousinly nor loving. I let him go, I would have been glad to throw a large volume at his retreating upright head. Then I went in to my father and wondered how long it would before Daniel came to see him to say that he wanted to be released from our betrothal, and what would happen to me then.

* * *

As Fool to the queen I was expected to be in her chambers every day, at her side. But as soon as I could be absent for an hour without attracting notice, I took a chance, and went to the old Dudley rooms to look for John Dee. I tapped on the door and a man in strange livery opened it and looked suspiciously at me.

‘I thought the Dudley household lived here,’ I said timidly.

‘Not any more,’ he said smartly.

‘Where will I find them?’

He shrugged. ‘The duchess has rooms near the queen. Her sons are in the Tower. Her husband is in hell.’

‘The tutor?’

He shrugged. ‘Gone away. Back to his father’s house, I should think.’

I nodded and took myself back to the queen’s rooms, and sat by her feet on a small cushion. Her little dog, a greyhound, had a cushion that matched mine; and dog and I sat, noses parallel, watching with the same brown-eyed incomprehension, while the courtiers came and made their bows and applied for land and places and favours of grants of money, and sometimes the queen patted the dog and sometimes she patted me; and dog and I stayed mum, and never said what we thought of these pious Catholics who had kept the flame of their faith so wonderfully hidden for so long. Well-hidden while they proclaimed the Protestant religion, hidden while they saw Catholics burned, waiting till this moment, like daffodils at Easter, to burst forth and flower. To think that there were so many believers in the country, and nobody knew them till now!

When they were all gone she walked up to a window embrasure where no-one could hear us and beckoned for me. ‘Hannah?’

‘Yes, Your Grace?’ I went to her side at once.

‘Isn’t it time you were out of your pageboy livery? You will be a woman soon.’