“You can help me with the horses,” Daniel said quickly and I left the tailgate of the wagon and went to the head of the nearest horse.

We led them, slipping a little clumsily on the cobbles of the side street, until we came out to the solid track of Fleet Street and headed toward the city.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the docks,” he said. “There is a ship waiting on the tide, I have booked our passage to France.”

“I have money for my own passage,” I said.

He threw me a dark smile. “I already paid for you. I knew you would come.”

I gritted my teeth at his arrogance and tugged on the reins of the big horse and said, “Come on then!” as if the horse were to blame, and as it felt the even ground of the street under its hooves it started a steady walk and I swung up on to the driving box of the wagon. A few moments later and Daniel joined me.

“I did not mean to taunt you,” he said stiffly. “I only meant that I knew you would do the right thing. You could not leave your father and your People, and choose to live among strangers forever.”

I shook my head. In the cold morning light with the fog curling off the Thames I could see the great palaces that faced out over the river, their pleasure gardens running down to the water’s edge. All of them were places I had enjoyed, a favored guest in the queen’s train. We entered the city, just stirring to start the day, and I saw the smoke from the ovens uncurling from the bakers’ chimneys, past the church of St. Paul’s scented once more with incense, and then we headed along the familiar route toward the Tower.

Daniel knew I was thinking of Robert Dudley as the shadow of the curtain wall fell over our little wagon. I looked up, past the wall to where the great white tower pointed like a raised fist shaken at the sky as if to say that whoever held the Tower, held London; and justice and mercy had nothing to do with it.

“Perhaps he’ll slither free,” Daniel said.

I turned my head away. “I’m leaving, aren’t I?” I said inconsequentially. “That should be enough for you.”

There was a light at one of the windows, a little candle flame. I thought of Robert Dudley’s table drawn up to the window and his chair before it. I thought of him sleepless in the night, trying to prepare for his own death, mourning those he had brought to theirs, fearful for those who still waited, like the Princess Elizabeth, watching for the morning when they would be told that this was their last day. I wondered if he had any sense of me, out here in the darkness, driving away from him, longing to be with him, betraying him with every step of the big horses’ hooves.

“Stay,” Daniel said quietly, as if I had shifted in my seat. “There is nothing you can do.”

I subsided and looked dully at the thickness of the walls and the forbidding gated entrances as we skirted all around the breadth of the Tower and came back to the riverside at the last.

One of Daniel’s sisters poked her head up from the back of the wagon. “Are we nearly there?” she asked, her voice sharp with fear.

“Nearly,” Daniel said gently. “Greet your new sister, Hannah. This is Mary.”

“Hello, Mary,” I said.

She nodded at me and stared as if I were some freak show at Bartholomew’s fair. She took in the richness of my cloak and the fine quality of my linen and then her eyes went down to the shine on my boots and my embroidered hose and breeches. Then without another word she turned and dropped down to the body of the wagon and whispered to her sisters and I heard their muffled laughter.

“She’s shy,” Daniel said. “She doesn’t mean to be rude.”

I was absolutely certain that she was determined to be rude but there was no point in telling him. Instead I wrapped the cloak a little closer around myself and watched the dark flow of the water as we plodded down the road to the dockside.

I glanced back upriver and then I saw a sight that made me put my hand out to Daniel. “Stop!”

He did not tighten the rein. “Why? What is it?”

“Stop, I say!” I said abruptly. “I have seen something on the river.”

He paused then, the horses turned a little as they were pulled up, and I could see the royal barge, but with no standard flying. Queen Mary’s own barge, but not with the queen on board, the drumbeat keeping the rowers in time, a dark figure at the front of the boat, two hooded men, one at the rear, one at the prow, scanning the banks in case of trouble.

“They must have Elizabeth,” I guessed.

“You can’t possibly tell,” Daniel said. He shot a glance at me. “And if they do have her? It’s nothing to do with us. They’d be bound to arrest her now that Wyatt…”

“If they turn into the Tower then they have her on board and they are taking her to her death,” I said flatly. “And Lord Robert will die too.”

He went to flick the reins to make the horse move on, but I clamped my hand on his wrist. “Let me see, damn you,” I spat at him.

He waited for a moment. As we watched the barge turned, struggled against the onrush of the tide and then headed toward the Tower. The dark watergate – a heavy portcullis, which protected the Tower from the river – rolled up; this visit was prearranged to be secret and silent. The barge went in, the watergate came down, there was utter silence except the plash of the dark water running by us. It was as if the hushed barge and the two dark watching men at prow and stern had never been.

I slipped down from the wagon and I leaned back against the forewheel, closing my eyes. I could imagine the scene as brightly as if it were noon, Elizabeth arguing and delaying and struggling for every extra minute, all the way from the watergate to the room they would have prepared for her in the Tower. I could see her fighting for every grain of sand in the hourglass, as she always did, as she always would do. I could see her bartering words for every moment. And finally, I could see her in her room, looking down on the green where her mother had her head swept from her body with the sharpest French sword they could find, and I could see her watching them build the scaffold that would be her own death place.

Daniel was by my side. “I have to go to her,” I said. I opened my eyes as if I had wakened from a dream. “I have to go. I promised I would go back to her, and now she is near death. I cannot betray a promise to a dying woman.”

“You will be identified with her and with him,” he whispered passionately. “When they come to hang the servants you will be among them.”

I did not even answer him, something nagged in my mind. “What was that you said about Wyatt?”

He flushed, I saw that I had caught him out. “Nothing.”

“You did. When I saw the barge. You said something about Wyatt. What about him?”

“He has been tried and found guilty and sentenced to death,” Daniel said abruptly. “They have his confession to convict Elizabeth.”

“You knew this? And kept it from me?”

“Yes.”

I drew my cloak around my dark breeches, and went around to the back of the wagon.

“Where are you going?” He put his hand out and grabbed me at the elbow.

“I am getting my bag, I am going to the Tower, I am going to Elizabeth,” I said simply. “I will stay with her till her death and then I will come to find you.”

“You can’t travel to Italy on your own,” he said in sudden rage. “You cannot defy me like this. You are my betrothed, I have told you what we are doing. See, my sisters, my mother, all obey me. You have to do the same.”

I gritted my teeth and squared up to him as if I were in truth a young man and not a girl in breeches. “See, I do not obey you,” I said bluntly. “See, I am not a girl like your sisters. See, even if I were your wife you would not find me biddable. Now take your hand off my arm. I am not a girl to be bullied. I am a royal servant, it is treason to touch me. Let me go!”