Every day provides a new entertainment. We have a masque hunt led by a great giant of a man playing the Spirit of the Greenwood on a big bay horse, we have mummers and a performance of strange tall men, Egyptians, who eat live coals and are so terrifying that Mary ducks her head into my lap and Margaret cries and even Harry leans back in his little chair to feel my comforting hand on his shoulder. And all through the dancing and masquing and jockeying for position, there is Lady Katherine Huntly, the most beautiful woman at court, in her black velvet. There is my husband, quite unable to take his eyes off her, there is her husband always half a pace to the left or the right of her, always with her, but only rarely her partner, exchanging one swift unreadable glance with her before she goes forwards to the king, in obedience to his beckoning wave, and curtseys to him and waits, composed and lovely, for him to make awkward conversation.

I see that in this season of celebration he prefers to watch entertainers with her, or ride beside her, or dance with her, or listen to music, anything where he does not have to find words to say. He cannot speak to her. For what could he say? He cannot court her: she is the wife of his prisoner, a proclaimed traitor. He cannot flirt with her: there is something very sobering about her dark black gown and her luminously pale face; he cannot fall to his knees and declare his love for her, though truly I think this is what he would most naturally do, because that would be to dishonor her since she is in his keeping, to dishonor me, his faultless wife, and to dishonor his own name and position.

“Shall I take her to one side and simply tell her that she must demand to go back to Scotland?” Maggie asks me directly. “Shall I tell her that she has to free you from this constant insult?”

“No,” I say, taking a careful stitch of a plain shirt. “For I am not insulted.”

“The whole court sees the king looking hound-eyed at her.”

“Then they see a king making a fool of himself; he is not making one of me,” I say sharply.

Maggie gasps at my daring to speak against the king.

“It’s not her at fault,” I continue. We both glance across the sunny chamber to where Lady Katherine is sitting, hemming a collar for a poor man’s shirt, her dark head bowed over the task.

“She has the king dancing to her tune like she was a tuppenny fiddle player,” Maggie says bluntly.

“She does nothing to encourage him. And it keeps her husband safe. While the king is besotted with her, he will not kill her husband.”

“It’s a price you’re prepared to pay?” Maggie whispers, shocked. “To keep the boy safe?”

I cannot help but smile. “I think it’s a price that both she and I are paying. And I would do so much more than this, to keep this young man safe.”