“Hard eyes?” he queried. “She has beautiful eyes.”

“I mean she looks hard at things,” I explained. “She has no faith, she never closes her eyes in awe. She is not like my lady, you never see her amazed at the raising of the Host. She wants to know everything as a fact, she trusts nothing.”

Lord Robert nodded at the accuracy of the description. “Aye. She was always one to take nothing on trust.”

“The queen forced her to Mass and Lady Elizabeth went with her hand on her belly, sighing for pain. Then, when the queen pressed her again, she said that she had converted. The queen wanted the truth from her. She asked her to tell the secrets of her heart: if she believed in the Holy Sacrament or no.”

“The secrets of Elizabeth’s heart!” he exclaimed, laughing. “What can the queen be thinking of? Elizabeth allows no one near the secrets of her heart. Even when she was a child in the nursery she would barely whisper them to herself.”

“Well, she said she would give out in public that she is convinced of the merits of the old religion,” I said. “But she doesn’t do so. And she goes to Mass only when she has to. And everyone says…”

“What do they say, my little spy?”

“That she is sending out letters to true Protestants, that she has a network of supporters. That the French will pay for an uprising against the queen. And that, at the very least, she only has to wait until the queen dies and then the throne is all hers anyway, and she can throw off all disguise and be a Protestant queen as she is now a Protestant princess.”

“Oho.” He paused, taking all this in. “And the queen believes all this slander?”

I looked up at him, hoping that he would understand. “She thought that Elizabeth would be a sister to her,” I said. “She went with her into London at the very moment of her greatest triumph. She took Elizabeth at her side then, and again at the day of her coronation. What more could she do to show that she loved her and trusted her and saw her as the next heir? And since then, every day, she hears that Elizabeth has done this, or said that, and she sees Elizabeth avoiding Mass, and pretending that she will go, and sliding in her conscience forward and back as she wishes. And Elizabeth…” I broke off.

“Elizabeth what?”

“She was there at the coronation, she was placed second only to the queen at the queen’s own request. She rode in a chariot behind the queen’s,” I said in a fierce whisper. “She carried her train at the coronation, she was first to kneel before the new queen and put her hands in hers and swear to be a true and faithful subject. She swore fidelity before God. How can she now plot against her?”

He sat back in his chair and observed my heat with interest. “Is the queen angry with Elizabeth?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s worse than anger. She is disappointed in her. She is lonely, Lord Robert. She wanted her little sister at her side. She singled her out for love and respect. She can hardly believe now that Elizabeth does not love her; to find that Elizabeth would plot against her is very painful. And she is assured that she is plotting. Someone comes with a new story every day.”

“Do they bring any evidence?”

“Enough to have her arrested a dozen times over, I think. There are too many rumors for her to be as innocent as she looks.”

“And still the queen does nothing against her?”

“She wants to bring peace,” I said. “She won’t act against Elizabeth unless she has to. She says that she won’t execute Lady Jane, or your brother…” I did not say “or you” but we were both thinking of the sentence of death hanging over him. “She wants to bring peace to this country.”

“Well, amen to that,” Lord Robert said. “And will Elizabeth stay at court for Christmas?”

“She has asked to leave. She says she is ill again and needs the peace of the country.”

“And is she ill?”

I shrugged. “Who can say? She was very bloated and ill-looking when I saw her the other day. But nobody ever really sees her. She keeps to her rooms. She comes out only when she has to. No one speaks to her, the women are unkind to her. Everyone says there is nothing wrong with her but envy.”

He shook his head at the petty spite of women. “All this and the poor girl has to carry a rosary and a missal and go to Mass!”

“She’s not a poor girl,” I said, stung. “She is poorly treated by the ladies of the queen’s court, but she can blame herself for that. It is only when there are people to see that she speaks very softly and walks with her head drooping. And as for Mass, everyone has to go, all the time. They sing a Mass in the queen’s chapel seven times a day. Everyone goes at least twice a day.”

He half smiled at the rapid turn of the court to piety. “And Lady Jane? Is she truly not to die for her treason?”

“The queen will never kill her own cousin, a young woman,” I assured him. “She’s to live here for a while as a prisoner in the Tower, and then be released, when the country is quiet.”

He made a little grimace. “A great risk for the queen. If I were her advisor I would tell her to make an end of it, to make an end of all of us.”

“She knows it was not Lady Jane’s choice. It would be cruel of the queen to punish Lady Jane; and she is never cruel.”

“And the girl was only sixteen,” he said, half to himself. He rose to his feet, hardly aware of me. “I should have stopped it,” he said. “I should have kept Jane safely out of it, whatever plots my father made…”

He looked out of the window at the dark courtyard below where his own father had been executed, begging for mercy, offering evidence against Jane, against his sons, anyone, if he could be spared. When he had knelt before the block, the blindfold over his eyes had slipped down and he had pulled it up and then groped about on his hands and knees, pleading with the headsman to wait until he was ready. It was a miserable end; but not as miserable as the death he had given to the young king in his charge, who had been innocent of everything.

“I was a fool,” Robert said bitterly. “Blinded by my own ambition. I am surprised you did not foresee it, child, I would have thought the heavens would have been rocking with laughter over the Dudley hubris. I wish to God you had warned me in time.”

I stood, my back to the fire. “I wish I had done,” I said sadly. “I would have done anything to save you from being here.”

“And shall I stay here till I rot?” he asked quietly. “Can you foresee that for me? Some nights I hear the rats skitter on the floor and I think, this is all I will ever hear, this square of blue sky through the window will be all I ever see. She will not behead me, but she will cut off my youth.”

In silence, I shook my head. “I listen and listen, and once I asked her directly. She said that she wanted no blood spilt that could be spared. She won’t execute you and she must let you go free when Lady Jane goes free.”

“I wouldn’t if I were her,” he said quietly. “If I were her, I would rid myself of Elizabeth, of Jane, of my brother and of me; and name Mary Stuart as the next heir, French or not. One clean cut. That’s the only way to get this country back into the Papist church and keep it there, and soon she will realize it. She has to wipe us out, this generation of Protestant plotters. If she does not she will have to cut off one head after another and watch others rise.”

I crossed the room and stood behind him. Timidly I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at me as if he had forgotten my presence. “And you?” he asked gently. “Safe in royal service now?”

“I am never safe,” I said in a low voice. “You know why. I never can be safe. I never can feel safe. I love the queen and no one questions who I am or where I have come from. I am known as her fool, as if I had been with her all my life. I should feel safe, but I always feel as if I am creeping across thin ice.”