“Well, amen to that,” I said.

“And what is your message?” she asked more soberly.

“Can we talk in your privy chamber? And can I bring Jane Dormer to you?”

“With Lord Robert,” she stipulated. “And John Dee.”

I bowed my head and followed her as she walked down the gallery to her chamber. The court billowed into bows as she went past as if she were queen already. I smiled, remembering a day when she had limped with her shoe in her hand and no one had offered her an arm. Now they would lay down their cloaks in the mud to keep her feet dry.

We went into her chamber and Elizabeth took a small wooden chair by the fireside. She gestured that I could pull up a stool and I took it to the other side of the fire, put Danny on my knee, and leaned back against the wooden paneling. I had a sense that I should be quiet and listen. The queen wanted me to advise her if Elizabeth would keep the true faith. I had to listen through the words to the meaning behind them. I had to look through the mask of her smiling face and into her heart.

The door opened, and Jane came into the room. She swept Elizabeth the scantest of curtseys and stood before her. Elizabeth gestured her to sit.

“I will stand, if it please you,” Jane said stiffly.

“You have business with me.” Elizabeth invited her to begin.

“The queen has asked Hannah and me to come to you and put a question to you. The queen requires you to make your answer in very truth. She would want you to swear on your soul that the answer you give is the truth and the whole truth.”

“And what is this question?”

Danny squirmed in my lap and I shifted him in a little closer, putting his small head against my cheek, so that I could look over him to the princess’s pale face.

“The queen bid me tell you that she will name you as her heir, her one true heir, and you will be queen on the throne of England without a word of dissent if you will promise her that you will cleave to the true faith,” Jane said quietly.

John Dee drew in a sharp breath, but the princess was absolutely still.

“And if I do not?”

“Then she will name another heir.”

“Mary Stuart?”

“I do not know and I will not speculate,” Jane replied.

The princess nodded. “Am I to swear on a Bible?” she asked.

“On your soul,” Jane said. “On your immortal soul before God.”

It was a solemn moment. Elizabeth glanced toward Lord Robert and he took a little step toward her, as if he would protect her.

“And does she swear to name me as heir in return?”

Jane Dormer nodded. “If you are of the true faith.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I will swear,” she said.

She rose to her feet. Robert Dudley started forward as if he would stop her but she did not even look at him. I did not rise as I should have done, I stayed completely still, my eyes fixed on her pale face as if I would read her like a clean page of text, fresh off the press, with the ink still drying.

Elizabeth raised her hand. “I swear, on my immortal soul, that I shall keep this country in the true faith,” she said. Her hand trembled slightly. She brought it down and clasped her hands together before her, and turned to Jane Dormer.

“Did she ask for anything more?”

“No more,” Jane said, her voice very thin.

“So you can tell her I have done it?”

Jane’s eyes slid toward me, and the princess was on to her at once.

“Ah, so that is what you are here for.” She rounded on me. “My little seer-spy. You are to make a window into my soul and see into my heart and tell the queen what you think you know, what you imagine you saw.”

I said nothing.

“You will tell her that I raised my hand and I swore her oath,” she commanded me. “You will tell her that I am her true heir.”

I rose to my feet, Danny’s little head lolled sleepily against my shoulder. “If we may, we will stay here tonight, and return to the queen tomorrow,” I said, avoiding answering.

“There was one other thing,” Jane Dormer said. “Her Grace requires you to pay her debts and take care of her trusted servants.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Of course. Assure my sister that I will honor her wishes as any true heir would do.”

I think only I could have heard the ripple of Elizabeth’s joy under her grave voice. I did not condemn her for it. Like Mary she had waited all her life for the moment when she might hear the news that she was queen, and now she thought that it would come to her, without dissent, tomorrow, or the day after.

“We will leave at dawn,” I said, thinking of the frailty of the queen’s health. I knew she would be hanging on to hear that England was safe within the true faith, that whatever else was lost, she had restored England into grace.

“Then I will bid you goodnight and God speed now,” Elizabeth said sweetly.

She let us get to the door and Jane Dormer to go through ahead of me, before she said, so quietly that only I, listening for her summons, could have heard it: “Hannah.”

I turned.

“I know you are her loyal friend as well as mine,” she said gently. “Do this last service for your mistress and take my word as true, and let her go to her God with some comfort. Give her peace, and give peace to our country.”

I bowed to her and went out.

I thought we would leave Hatfield without another farewell but when I went for my horse on a frosty cold morning with the sun burning red like an ember on the white horizon, there was Lord Robert looking handsome and smiling, wrapped in a dark red velvet cloak with John Dee at his side.

“Is your boy warm enough for the journey?” he asked me. “It’s been a hard frost and the air is bitter.”

I pointed behind me. Danny was laboring along under an extra-thick jerkin of wool, carrying a shawl that I had insisted he bring. He peeped at me from under a heavy woolen cap. “The poor boy is half drowned in clothes,” I said. “He will sweat rather than freeze.”

Robert nodded. “The men are to be released from Calais within a week,” he said. “They will be collected by a ship which will bring them into Gravesend.”

I felt my heart beat a little faster.

“You are blushing like a girl,” Lord Robert said, gently mocking.

“Do you think he will have had my letter, that I sent when I first came home?” I asked.

Lord Robert shrugged. “He may have done. But you can tell him yourself, soon enough.”

I drew a little closer to him. “You see, if he did not receive it then he will not know that I escaped out of Calais. He might think I am dead. He might not come to England, he might go to Italy or somewhere.”

“On the off-chance that you are dead?” Lord Robert asked critically. “With no one ever mentioning it to him? With no proof? And his son?”

“In the confusion of the battle,” I said weakly.

“Someone would have looked for you,” he said. “If you had been killed they would have found your body.”

I shifted awkwardly. Daniel came to me and stretched out his arms. “Dan’l up!” he commanded.

“Wait a moment,” I said absently. I turned back to Lord Robert. “You see, if someone told him that I left with you…”

“Then he would know that you are alive, and where to find you,” he said logically. Then he checked and slapped his forehead. “Mistress Boy, you have played me for an idiot all along. You are estranged from him, aren’t you? And you fear that he will think you ran away with me? And he won’t come for you because he has cast you off? And now you don’t want me; but you’ve lost him, and all you’ve got is his son…” He broke off, struck with sudden doubt. “He is your husband’s son, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said staunchly.

“Is he yours?” he said, some sense warning him that there was a lie hidden away somewhere near.

“Yes,” I said without wavering.

Lord Robert laughed aloud. “My God, girl, you are a fool indeed. You did not love him till you lost him.”