The king went around with a face like thunder, exposed to sharp wit in the English court and to danger in the English countryside. He had guards posted night and day on the roads to the palace, and soldiers at every pier on the river. It was thought that if the queen died in childbirth there would be a thousand men at the gate of the palace to tear the Spanish apart. The only thing that could keep him safe then would be the goodwill of the new queen, Elizabeth. No wonder the princess swished around the court in her dark gown as if she were a black cat, the favored resident of a dairy, overfed on cream.

The Spanish noblemen of the king’s court grew more irritable, as if their own manhood had been impugned by the slowness of this baby. They were frightened of the ill will of the people of England. They were a small band under siege with no hope of relief. Only the arrival of the baby would have guaranteed their safety, and the baby was dangerously late in coming.

The ladies in the queen’s train became sulky; they felt as if they were being made to look like fools, sitting around with little pieces of sewing in their hands, making napkins and bibs and gowns for a baby that did not come. The younger girls, who had been hoping for a merry spring at court with May balls and picnics and masques and hunting, begrudged sitting with the queen in the stuffiness of a darkened room while she prayed for long hours in silence. They emerged from her confinement chamber with faces like spoiled children to say that nothing had happened again today, all day; and the queen seemed no nearer to her time than when she had entered her confinement two months ago.

Only Elizabeth seemed unaffected by the anxious atmosphere of the palace as she walked briskly around the gardens with her long stride, her copper hair flying behind her, a book in her hands. No one walked with her, no one publicly befriended her, no one risked being closely identified with this most problematic princess, but everyone was more aware than ever that as matters now stood, she was the heir to the throne. The birth of a son, would mean that Elizabeth was again unwanted, a threat to everyone’s peace. But while there was no son, then she was the next queen. And whether she was the next monarch, or whether she was an unwanted princess, the king could not take his eyes off her.

At dinner every night, King Philip bowed his head to her before he closed his eyes for grace, in the morning he smiled at her and wished her good day. Sometimes, when there was dancing, she took to the floor with the young ladies of the court, and he sat back in his chair and watched her, his eyes veiled, his face revealing nothing of his thoughts. She never returned his look directly these days, she shot him a cool dark gaze from under lowered eyelids and moved carefully in the paces of the dance, her neck poised, her slim waist shifting from side to side, in time to the music. When she curtsied toward the empty throne of her sister at the end of the dance she kept her face down but her smile was one of absolute triumph. Elizabeth knew that Philip could not take his eyes from her, however guarded his expression. She knew that Mary, tired, despairing of her son, was hardly a rival worth vanquishing; but Elizabeth’s young glad pride leaped up to the challenge of humiliating her older sister by filling her brother-in-law with baffled desire.

I was going to my dinner in the great hall on a cool evening in the first days of June when I felt a touch on my hand. It was a little pageboy, servant to Sir William Pickering, and I threw a quick glance up the stairway to see who else might have seen him before I bent my head to his whisper.

“Lord Robert says to tell you that John Dee is arrested for casting the queen’s horoscope,” he said, his breath tickling my ear. “He said to burn any books or letters of his.”

In the next second he was gone and all my peace of mind gone with him. I turned and walked into dinner, my face a mask, my heart hammering, the back of my hand rubbing feverishly at my cheek, thinking of nothing but the book that John Dee had sent to my father and which he had forwarded, like an arrow to our door.

That night I lay in bed, unsleeping, my heart pounding with terror. I could not think what I should do to protect myself, to protect my father’s fortune which was still stored in the dusty shop off Fleet Street. And what if John Dee told them that I had scryed for him? What if some spy had reported on the afternoon in Princess Elizabeth’s rooms when he had drawn up the astrological charts on the queen herself? What if they knew about handsome Sir William, leaning against the door and being assured that I would run errands for him and for Elizabeth?

I watched the dawn turn my little window pale with light, and by five in the morning I was on the steps at the river gate, scanning the water for a passing wherry boat which might take me into the city.

I was lucky. An old boatman, starting his day’s work, came across at my hail and took me on board. The soldier sleepily guarding the pier did not even see that I was not a real lad in livery.

“Lechery?” he asked with a wink, guessing from the hour that I had been with some palace kitchenmaid.

“Oh aye, most vile,” I said cheerfully, and jumped into the boat.

I paid my fare and scrambled ashore at the Fleet stairs. I approached the street carefully, trying to see if the door of our shop had been forced. It was too early for our intrusive neighbor to spot me, only a few dairymaids were calling their cows out of the backyards to take them to the meadows for their grass, there was no one to pay any attention to me.

Even so, I hesitated in the opposite doorway for long moments, watching the street and making sure that no one was watching me before I crossed the dirty cobblestones and let myself into the shop and closed our door quickly behind me.

It was dark and dusty inside the shop with the shutters closed. I could see that nothing had been disturbed, nobody had come here yet, I was in time. The package labeled “for Mr. John Dee” in my father’s hand had been taken in by our neighbor and left on the counter, as incriminating as a brand for the burning.

I untied the string and broke my father’s seal. Inside were two books; one was a set of tables which showed, as far as I could tell, the positions of the planets and stars, the other was a guide to astrology in Latin. The two of them in our shop, addressed to John Dee, a man arrested for casting the date of the queen’s death, was enough to have both my father and me hanged for treason.

I took them to the empty fireplace and crumpled up the wrapping paper, ready to burn them, my hands shaking in my haste. I rubbed at the tinderbox for long minutes before it caught, my fear rising at every moment. Then the flint sparked, and lit the tinder, and I could light a candle and take the flame to the paper in the grate. I held it under the corner of the wrapping paper and watched the flame lick it until it was blazing bright yellow.

I took up the books, planning to tear out a handful of pages at a time and burn each one. The first book, the one written in Latin, fluttered open in my hand. I took a fat handful of soft paper pages. They yielded to my fingers as if they had no power, as if they were not the most dangerous thing in the world. I tried to tear them from the fragile spine, but then I hesitated.

I could not do it. I would not do it. I sat back on my heels with the book in my hand with the light of the fire flickering and dying down and realized that not even when I was in mortal danger could I bring myself to burn a book.

It went against the grain of me. I had seen my father carry some of these books across Christendom, strapped to his heart, knowing that the secrets they contained were newly named as heretical. I had seen him buy books and sell books and, more than that, lend and borrow them just for the joy of seeing their learning go onward, spread outward. I had seen his delight in finding a missing volume, I had seen him welcome a lost folio back to his shelves as if it were the son he had never had. Books were my brothers and sisters; I could not turn against them now. I could not become one of those that see something they cannot understand, and destroy it.