I shift again from foot to foot. Fair Hair looks up at me, then hastily at a tapestry. It’s got a picture of a naked lady in a wood under a full moon on it. It’s different from the naked-lady pictures my Daffrey uncles paid a printer to ink up and sell on market days. On the tapestry, tree branches cover all the naughty bits. Also, one of the naked lady’s hands is on a trunk of a tree that has a winged fairy coming out of a flower in it. The naked lady’s other hand’s on her belly like she’s got the guts gripes. That’s what my mother called it when your belly gets sore and cramped from too much yellow bile or worms. In the weaving there’s not all the details of a true woman, like the belly’s all one smooth plain, and the toes are all the same length. At the foot of the naked woman are fierce creatures like you’d never want near in real life: a yellow lion, a big stag, and a blue boar. They’re all at her feet like dogs.

‘Has Diana in the Wood become so absorbing?’ Mush Face asks Fair Hair.

‘I heard Lady Corliss commissioned it for a thousand pounds.’

‘A thousand pounds,’ repeats Mush Face. Her eyes get dull. ‘It’s nothing compared to the gifts the Queen showers on her favourites.’

I look at the tapestry woman’s face. Something niggles. She looks just like the Queen. The same hair and eyes. Surely there’s something wrong about that. A weaving of the Queen without her clothing.

I look over the rest of the tapestry. There’s a border of vines and leaves all around the edges. But in one place, the vines are uneven. Mayhap they’re letters. Two of them look like little N’s, which I know from my own name. The middle one I’ve never seen, but then there are probably hundreds of letters I don’t know. This letter looks like a skinny boy leaning over to study a stone in his hand. Or a small tree leaning under the weight of an apple. There’s also little letters underneath the big ones. One looks like a gallows. Another looks like the littlest of worms. Mayhap these letters explain why the tapestry is so costly. I look at Fair Hair. She’s still looking at the tapestry too.

‘I heard the Queen’s favourite was married once,’ Fair Hair says so quietly I barely catch the words. ‘But just after he joined the Queen’s court, his wife took a nasty fall down a stair and broke her head like an egg.’

Mush Face crosses herself across shoulders and hips, ‘Maker save us from such misfortune.’

‘Misfortune, was it?’ Fair Hair’s tongue darts against her upper lip, letting her words sit.