“If any man ever finds it, and can make gold, it will be John Dee,” my father said. “He is a most profound student and thinker.”

“I know that,” I said, thinking of the afternoons when I had sat on his high stool and read passage after passage of Greek or Latin while he translated as swiftly as I spoke, surrounded by the tools of his craft. “But do you think he can see into the future?”

“Hannah, this man can see around corners! He has created a machine that can see over buildings or around them. He can predict the course of the stars, he can measure and predict the movements of the tides, he is creating a map of the country that a man can use to navigate the whole coastline.”

“Yes, I have seen that,” I concurred, thinking that I last saw it on the desk of the queen’s enemies. “He should have a care who uses his work.”

“His work is pure study,” my father said firmly. “He cannot be blamed for the use that men make of his inventions. This is a great man, the death of his patron means nothing. He will be remembered long after the duke and all of his family are forgotten.”

“Not Lord Robert,” I stipulated.

“Even him,” my father asserted. “I tell you, child, I have never met a man who could read and understand words, tables, mechanical diagrams, even codes, more quickly than this John Dee. Oh! And I nearly forgot. He has ordered some books to be delivered to Lord Robert in the Tower.”

“Has he?” I said, my attention suddenly sharpened. “Shall I take them to Lord Robert for him?”

“As soon as they arrive,” my father said gently. “And, Hannah, if you see Lord Robert…”

“Yes?”

“Querida, you must ask him to release you from your service to him and bid him farewell. He is a traitor sentenced to death. It is time that you said farewell.”

I would have argued but my father raised his hand. “I command it, daughter,” he insisted. “We live in this country as toads beneath the ploughshare. We cannot increase the risk to our lives. You have to bid him farewell. He is a named traitor. We cannot be associated with him.”

I bowed my head.

“Daniel wishes it too.”

My head came up at that. “Why, whatever would he know about it?”

My father smiled. “He is not an ignorant boy, Hannah.”

“He is not at court. He does not know the way of that world.”

“He is going to be a very great physician,” my father said gently. “Many nights he comes here and reads the books on herbs and medicines. He is studying the Greek texts on health and illness. You should not think that just because he is not a Spaniard, he is ignorant.”

“But he can know nothing of the skills of the Moorish doctors,” I said. “And you yourself told me that they were the wisest in the world. That they had learned all the Greeks had to teach and gone further.”

“Yes,” my father conceded. “But he is a thoughtful young man, and a hard worker, and he has a gift for study. He comes here twice a week to read. And he always asks for you.”

“Does he?”

My father nodded. “He calls you his princess,” he said.

I was so surprised for a moment that I could not speak. “His princess?”

“Yes,” my father said, smiling at my incomprehension. “He speaks like a young man in love. He comes to see me and he asks me, “How is my Princess?” – and he means you, Hannah.”

The coronation of my mistress, Lady Mary, was set for the first day of October and the whole court, the whole city of London, and the whole country had spent much of the summer preparing for the celebration which would bring Henry’s daughter to his throne at last. There were faces missing from the crowds that lined the London streets. Devoted Protestants, mistrusting the queen’s sincere promise of tolerance, had already frightened themselves into exile, and fled overseas. They found a friendly reception in France; the traditional enemy of England was arming against England again. There were faces missing from the queen’s council; the queen’s father would have wondered where some of his favorites were now. Some were ashamed of their past treatment of her, some Protestants would not serve her, and some had the grace to stay home in their converted abbeys. But the rest of the court, city and country turned out in their thousands to greet the new queen, the queen whose rights they had defended against other, Protestant claimants, the Catholic queen whose enthusiastic faith they knew, and that, nonetheless, they preferred to all others.

It was a fairy-tale coronation, the first I had ever seen. It was a spectacle like something out of one of my father’s storybooks. A princess in a golden chariot, wearing blue velvet trimmed with white ermine, riding through the streets of her city, which were hung with tapestries, past fountains running with wine so that the very air was heady with the warm scent of it, past crowds who screamed with delight at the sight of their princess, their virgin queen, and pausing by groups of children who sang hymns in praise of the woman who had fought to be queen and was bringing the old religion back home again.

In the second carriage was the Protestant princess, but the cheers for her were nothing compared to the roar that greeted the diminutive queen every time her chariot rounded a corner. With Princess Elizabeth rode Henry’s neglected queen, Anne of Cleves, fatter than ever, with a ready smile for the crowd, the knowing gleam, I thought, of one survivor to another. And behind that chariot came forty-six ladies of the court and country, on foot and dressed in their best, and flagging a little by the time we had processed from Whitehall to the Tower.

Behind them, in the procession of officers of the court, came all the minor gentry and officials, me amongst them. Ever since I had come to England I had known myself to be a stranger, a refugee from a terror that I had to pretend I did not fear. But when I walked in the queen’s coronation procession with Will Somers, the witty fool, beside me, and my yellow cap on my head and my fool’s bell on a stick in my hand, I had a sense of coming into my own. I was the queen’s fool, my destiny had led me to be there with her from the first moment of her betrayal, through her flight and to her courageous proclamation. She had earned her throne and I had earned my place at her side.

I did not care that I was named as a fool. I was the holy fool, known to have the Sight, known to have predicted this day when the queen would come to her own. Some even crossed themselves as I went by, acknowledging the power that was vested in me. So I marched with my head up and I did not fear that all those eyes upon me would see my olive skin and my dark hair and name me for a Spaniard or worse. I thought myself an Englishwoman that day, and a loyal Englishwoman at that, with a proven love for my queen and for my adopted country; and I was glad to be one.

We slept that night in the Tower and the next day Lady Mary was crowned Queen of England, with her sister Elizabeth carrying her train, and the first to kneel to her and to swear allegiance. I could hardly see the two of them, I was crammed at the back of the Abbey, peering around a gentleman of the court, and in any case, my sight was blinded with tears at the knowledge that my Lady Mary had come to her throne, her sister beside her, and her lifelong battle for recognition and justice was over at last. God (whatever His name might be) had finally blessed her; she had won.

However united the queen and her sister had appeared when Elizabeth had kneeled before her, the Lady Elizabeth continued to carry her brother’s prayer book on a little chain at her waist, was never seen except in the soberest of gowns, and rarely appeared at Mass. She could not have shown the world more plainly that she was the Protestant alternative to the queen to whom she had just sworn lifelong loyalty. As ever, with Elizabeth, there was nothing that the queen could specifically criticize, it was the very air of her: the way she always set herself slightly apart, the way she always seemed to carry herself as if she, regretfully, could not wholly agree.