Elizabeth gave a little soft moan and twisted from his grip, almost falling back amongst her ladies. “Who was it? Who was it?” they chanted, relieved that she had freed herself from his embrace.

“I give up,” he said. “I cannot play some foolish game. I have touched the very curves of heaven.”

He pulled the blindfold from his eyes and I saw his face. His eyes met Elizabeth’s. He knew exactly who it had been in his arms, he had known from the moment he had caught her, as he had intended to do; as she had intended him to do. He had caressed her in front of all the court, caressed her as an accepted lover, and she had let him stroke her as if she were a whore. She smiled at him, her knowing desirous smile, and he smiled back.

Of course, the man was my lord Robert Dudley.

“And what are you doing here, child?” he asked me before dinner, walking on the terrace, the ladies of Elizabeth’s little court observing our progress while pretending not to watch.

“Queen Mary sent me to pay her compliments to Elizabeth.”

“Oho, my little spy, are you at work again?”

“Yes, and most unwillingly.”

“And what does the queen want to know?” He paused for a moment. “Anything about William Pickering? About me?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that I know of.”

He drew me to a stone seat. There was honeysuckle growing on the wall behind me and the smell was very sweet. He reached over and plucked a flower. The petals, scarlet and honey, lolled like the tongue of a snake. He brushed my neck with it. “So what does the queen want?”

“She wants to know what Count Feria was doing here,” I said simply. “Is he here?”

“Left yesterday.”

“What did he want?”

“He brought a message from the king. Queen Mary’s own beloved husband. A faithless dog, isn’t he, the randy old Spaniard?”

“Why d’you say that?”

“Mistress Boy, I have a wife who does me no service, and shows me no kindness, but not even I would court her own sister under her nose and shame her while she was still living.”

I swayed in my seat and took hold of his hand which was still playing with the flower. “He is courting Elizabeth?”

“The Pope has been approached to give permission for their marriage,” he said flatly. “How is that for Spanish punctilio for you? If the queen lives then it’s my guess that Philip will apply for an annulment of their marriage and marry Elizabeth. If the queen dies, then Elizabeth is heir to the throne and an even richer plum for the picking. He will snap her up within the year.”

I looked at him, my face quite blank with horror. “This cannot be,” I said, appalled. “It’s a betrayal. It’s the worst thing he could do to her. The worst thing he could do to her in all the world.”

“It’s an unexpected move,” he said. “Disagreeable for a loving wife.”

“The queen would die of grief and shame. To be put aside, as her mother was put aside? And for Anne Boleyn’s daughter?”

He nodded. “As I said, a faithless Spanish dog.”

“And Elizabeth?”

He glanced over my shoulder and he rose to his feet. “You can ask her yourself.”

I slid into a curtsey, and then came up. Elizabeth’s black eyes snapped at me. She did not like to see me seated beside Robert Dudley with him stroking my neck with honeysuckle flowers.

“Princess.”

“I heard you were back. My lord said that you had become a woman. I did not expect to see you quite so…”

I waited.

“Fat,” she said.

Instead of being insulted, as she intended, I giggled out loud at the childish jealous rudeness of her.

At once her eyes danced too. Elizabeth never sulked.

“Whereas you, Princess, are more beautiful than ever,” I said smoothly.

“I hope so. And what were you talking about with your heads so close together?”

“About you,” I said simply. “The queen sent me to find out how you did. And I was glad to come and see you.”

“I warned you not to leave it too late,” she said, her gesture taking in the waiting women, the lounging handsome men, the courtiers from London who saw me recognize them and looked a little abashed. A couple of members of the queen’s council stepped back from my scrutiny; with them was an envoy of France, and a minor prince or two.

“I see your ladyship keeps a merry court,” I said evenly. “As you should. And I cannot join you, even if you would condescend to have me. I have to serve your sister. She does not have a merry court, she has few friends. I would not leave her now.”

“Then you must be the only person in England who has not deserted her,” she said cheerfully. “I took on her cook last week. Does she get anything to eat at all?”

“She manages,” I said dryly. “And even the Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, her greatest friend and trusted councillor, was missing from court when I left.”

She shot a quick look at Robert Dudley and I saw him nod permission for her to speak.

“I refused his request,” she said gently. “I have no plans to marry anyone. You can assure the queen of that, for it is true.”

I gave her a little curtsey. “I am glad not to have to take her any news which would make her yet more unhappy.”

“I wish she would feel some distress for the people of the country,” Elizabeth said sharply. “The burning of heretics goes on, Hannah, the agony of innocent people. You should tell the queen that her sadness at the loss of a child who never was is nothing compared with the grief of a woman who sees her son go to the stake. And there are hundreds of women who have been forced to watch that.”

Robert Dudley came to my rescue. “Shall we dine?” he asked lightly. “And there will be music after dinner. I demand a dance.”

“Only one?” she queried, her mood lifting at once.

“Only one,” he said.

She made a little flirtatious pouting face.

“The one that starts when the music starts after dinner and ends when the sun comes up and no one can dance another step,” he said. “That one.”

“And what shall we do then, when we have danced ourselves to a standstill?” she asked provocatively.

I looked from her to him, I could hardly believe the intimacy of their tone. Anyone who heard them would have thought them to be lovers in the very first days of their desire.

“We will do whatever you wish, of course,” he said, his voice like silk. “But I know what I would wish.”

“What?” she breathed.

“To lie with…”

“With?”

“The morning sun on my face,” he finished.

Elizabeth stepped a little closer to him and whispered a phrase in Latin. I kept my expression deliberately blank. I had understood the Latin as readily as Lord Robert, she had whispered that she wanted kisses in the morning… From the sun, of course.

She turned to her court. “We will dine,” she announced out loud. She walked alone, head up, toward the doors to the great hall. As she went into the dark interior she paused and threw a glance at Lord Robert over her shoulder. I saw the invitation in her look, and almost like a moment of dizziness, I recognized that look. I had seen that very same look before, to the queen’s husband King Philip. And I had seen that look before then, when she had been a girl and I had been a child: to Lord Thomas Seymour, her stepmother’s husband. It was the same look, it was the invitation of the same desire. Elizabeth liked to choose her lovers from the husbands of other women, she liked to arouse desire from a man whose hands were tied, she liked to triumph over a woman who could not keep her husband, and more than anything in the world, she liked to throw that look over her shoulder and see a man start forward to go to her side – as Lord Robert started now.

Elizabeth’s court was a young merry optimistic court. It was the court of a young woman waiting for her fortune, waiting for her throne, certain, now, that it would come to her. It hardly mattered that the queen had not named her as heir; all the time-serving, self-serving men of the queen’s court and council had already pledged their allegiance to this rising star. Half of them had sons and daughters in her service already. The visit from Count Feria was nothing more than another straw in the wind which was blowing smoothly and sweetly toward Hatfield. It told everyone that the queen’s power, like her happiness, like her health, had waned. Even the queen’s husband had transferred to her rival.