"A code for life?"

"What if everything was made of the same things?" he asked me suddenly. "Sand and cheese, milk and earth? What if beyond the illusion of difference, beyond their clothes as it were, there was only one form in the world, and one could see it, draw it, even recreate it?"

I shook my head. "What then?"

"That form would be the code of everything," he said. "That would be the poem at the heart of the world."

Danny, who had been sleeping on the broad footstool beside me as I wrote, stirred in his sleep and sat up, smiling around him. His beam widened when he saw my face. "h.e.l.lo, my boy," I said gently.

He slid down and toddled toward me, keeping a cautious hand on his chair, and then mine, to hold himself steady. He took hold of a fold of my gown and looked up attentively into my face.

"He's very quiet," John Dee said softly.

"He does not speak," I said, smiling down at his upturned face. "But he is no fool. I know he understands everything. He will fetch things, and he knows their names. He knows his own name - don't you, Danny? But he will not speak."

"Was he always like this?"

The fear clenched at my heart: that I did not know what this child was like, and that if I admitted I did not know, someone might take him away from me. He was not my child, not born of my body, but his mother had put him into my arms and his father was my husband, and whatever I owed to my husband Daniel in terms of love and duty might be redeemed by my care for his son.

"I don't know, he was with his wet nurse in Calais," I lied. "She brought him to me when the city was under siege."

"He might be frightened," John Dee suggested. "Did he see the fighting?"

My heart contracted, I could feel it like a pain. I looked at him incredulously. "Frightened? But he is only a little baby. How would he know when he was in danger?"

"Who knows what he might think or understand?" John Dee said. "I don't believe that children know nothing but what is taught them, as if they were empty pots for the filling. He will have known one home and one woman caring for him, and then he might have been afraid, running through the streets to look for you. Children know more than we allow, I think. He might be afraid to speak now."

I leaned over him, and his bright dark eyes looked back at me, like the liquid eyes of a little deer. "Daniel?" I asked.

For the first time I thought of him as a real person, someone who might think and feel, someone who had been in the arms of his mother and felt himself thrust violently from her, into the arms of a stranger. Someone who had seen his mother ridden down by a horse and gored by a lance, who had seen his mother die in the gutter and then felt himself carried like an unwanted parcel on a boat, unloaded without explanation in England, jolted and jogged on the back of a horse to some cold house in the middle of nowhere, with no one he knew.

This was a child who had seen his mother die. This was a child without a mother. I leaned over him, I could feel the p.r.i.c.kle of hot tears underneath my eyelids. This was a child whose grief and fear I, of all people, could understand. I had hidden my own childhood fear behind all the languages of Christendom, in becoming fluent in every tongue. He, so much smaller, so much more afraid, had gone mute.

"Danny," I said gently. "I will be your mother. You will be safe with me."

"Is he not your child?" John Dee asked. "He looks so like you."

I looked up at him and I was tempted to trust him with the truth but fear kept me silent.

"Is he one of the Chosen People?" John Dee asked quietly.

Silently, I nodded my head.

"Circ.u.mcised?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Not in Calais, and here it is impossible."

"He might need the outward sign of being one of the People," Dee suggested. "He might need to be among his people before he can speak."

I looked at him in bewilderment. "How would he know?"

He smiled. "This little one has just come from the angels," he said. "He would know more than all of us put together."

Lady Amy Dudley kept to her room for the next three days while Robert and John Dee rode out hunting, read in the library, gambled small sums of money, and talked, night and day, riding and walking, at dinner and at play as to what the future of the country might be, what shape the n.o.bility and the parliament should take, how far the borders might extend overseas, what chance the small island kingdom of England had against the great continental powers, and - John Dee's great obsession - how England was uniquely placed to send out ships the world over and create a new form of kingdom, one which extended overseas, an empire. An empire which might dominate the unknown places of the world. He had calculated how big the world might be and he was convinced that there were great lands we had not yet touched. "Christopher Columbus," he said to my lord. "A brave man but no mathematician. It is obvious that you cannot have a pa.s.sage to China that you can broach within weeks. If you make the proper calculation you can show that the world is round but far, far greater than Columbus thought. And in that great extra quarter must be land. And how would it be if that land were to be English?"

Often I walked or rode or dined with them and often they would ask me how things were done in Spain, what I had seen in Portugal, or what I thought might be the success of such a scheme. We were cautious not to discuss what sort of monarch might be on the throne to launch such confident and ambitious schemes. While the queen was waiting to give birth to a son and heir, nothing could be certain.

On the evening of the third day of their visit my lord had a message from Dover, and left me and John Dee alone in the library. John Dee had drawn a map of the world after the model of his friend Gerard Mercator and tried to explain to me that I must think of the world as round, and think of this map as the skin of the world peeled off, like the skin peeled off an orange and laid flat.

He struggled to make me see it until he laughed and said that I must be content to see angels, I clearly could not see longitude. He took up his maps and went with them to his room as Lord Robert came into the library with a piece of paper in his hand. "At last I have news of your husband, he is safe," he said.

I jumped to my feet and found I was trembling. "My lord?"

"He was taken by the French who suspected him as a spy, but they are holding him with other English soldiers," he told me. "I daresay I can arrange for him to be exchanged for other prisoners of war, or ransomed, or something."

"He is safe?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Safe?" I asked incredulously.

He nodded again.

"Not sick, nor injured?"

"See for yourself," he said, handing over the three scrawled lines on the sheet of paper. "Held in the castle. If you were to write to him I could get it sent on."

"Thank you," I said. I read and reread the letter. It said nothing more than he had already told me but somehow in words of black ink on travel-stained paper it seemed more true. "Thank G.o.d."

"Thank G.o.d indeed," said my lord with a smile.

Impulsively I took his hand. "And thank you, my lord," I said fervently. "You are kind to take the trouble for me. I know it. I am grateful."

Gently he drew me in, put a warm hand on my waist. "Sweetheart, you know I would do anything in my power to make you happy."

I hesitated. His hand was light, I could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric of my gown. I felt myself lean toward him. He stole a quick glance up and down the empty gallery and then his mouth came down toward mine. He hesitated, he was such a practiced seducer that he knew the power of delay to increase desire. Then he bent a little lower and he kissed me, tenderly and then with increasing pa.s.sion until my arms were around his neck and he had me pressed against a wall, my head tipped back, my eyes closed, quite given up to the delicious sensation of his touch.

"Lord Robert," I whispered.

"I'm for bed. Come with me, sweetheart-mine."

I did not hesitate. "I am sorry my lord, no."

"You are sorry, my lord, no?" he repeated comically. "What d'you mean, Mistress Boy?"

"I shall not lie with you," I said steadily.

"Why not? Don't tell me it is not your desire, for I shan't believe you. I can taste it on your lips. You want me as much as I want you. And that is a good deal, tonight."

"It is my desire," I admitted. "And if I were not a married woman I would be glad to be your lover."

"Oh, Hannah, a husband such a long way away and safely in prison need not concern you. A word from you to me, and he can stay there until there is a general amnesty. For all I care he can stay there forever. Come to bed with me, now."

Steadfastly I shook my head. "No, my lord. I am sorry."

"Not sorry enough," he said crossly. "What ails you, child?"

"It is not that he might catch me," I said. "It is that I do not want to betray him."

"You betray him in your heart," Robert said cheerfully. "You lean back against my arm, you tip your head, you open your mouth for my kisses. He is betrayed already, Mistress Boy. The rest is just enacting the desire. It is no worse than what you have done already."

I smiled at his persuasive, self-serving logic. "Perhaps, but it is wrong. My lord, I tell you true, I have adored you since the day I first saw you. But I love Daniel with a true and honorable love, and I want to be a good wife to him, and faithful to him."

"This is nothing to do with true love between us, sweetheart," he said with his simple rake's brutality.

"I know," I said. "And now I want love. l.u.s.t is no good for me. I want love. His love."

He looked at me, his dark eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with laughter. "Ah, Hannah, this is a big mistake for a woman like you, with everything to play for and nothing to lose. You are the closest thing to a free woman I have ever known. A girl educated far beyond her s.e.x, a wife with a husband miles away, a woman with gifts, ambition, the sense to use them and the body of a beautiful wh.o.r.e. For G.o.d's sake, girl, be my mistress. You don't have to descend to being a wife."

I could not help but laugh. "I thank you," I said. "But I want to be a wife without descending. I want to choose Daniel when I find him again, and love him from my heart and with faithfulness."

"But you would so enjoy a night with me, you know," he said, partly from vanity, partly as a final attempt.

"I am very sure of it," I said, as shameless as he. "And if I cared for nothing but pleasure then I would be begging you for tonight and every night after. But I have fallen in love, my lord, and no one but my lover will do for me."

He stepped back and swept me a beautiful courtly bow, as low as if for a queen. "Mistress Boy, you always exceed my expectations. I knew you would make a wonderful woman but I never expected you would make a surprising and honorable woman. I hope your husband is worthy of you, I do indeed. And if he is not..."

I laughed. "If he breaks my heart a second time then I will come back to you as heartless as you are yourself, my lord," I said.

"Oh well, it is agreed," he said with a laugh, and went to his bed alone.

Within a few days his lordship and John Dee were ready to return to court. John Dee would go back to Bishop Bonner and would note the detail of the charges and the words of the interrogation of hundreds of men and women charged with heresy. He would see them sent for torture, and then when they confessed, he would see them sent for burning.

We walked to the stables together to check that the horses were ready for the journey, and an awkward silence fell between us. I would never ask him how he could bear to leave these innocent days in the country and go back to his work as hangman.

He spoke first. "Hannah, you know, it is better that it is me there, advising, than any other."

For a moment I did not understand him, then I realized that it was a plot, another plot, within a plot, within the great plots. Better that John Dee was examining Princess Elizabeth's supporters and friends than a man whose loyalties were solid to the queen and who desired to see them all burn.

"I don't know how you can bear it," I said simply. "The woman I saw, without her fingernails..."

He nodded. "G.o.d forgive us," he said quietly. "I am sorry that you were taken up, Hannah."

"I thank you for saving me, if that is what you did," I said unwillingly.

"Did you not know that I interceded for you?"

"I did not quite understand it, at the time," I said carefully.

John Dee took my hand and patted it. "You are right. I had a greater aim in view than your life. But I am glad that you were only brushed, and not broken, by this."

We walked into the stable yard and there was Lord Robert, watching a wagon being loaded with goods that he wanted for his rooms at Richmond: a beautiful tapestry and some fine carpets. I went up and spoke to him privately.

"Will you write and tell me how the queen does?" I asked.

"You are taking an interest in the succession?"

"I take an interest in the queen," I said. "I had no truer friend when I first came to her service."

"And then you ran off and left her," he observed.

"My lord, as you know, they were dangerous times. I was safer away from court then."

"And now?"

"I don't expect safety. But I have to find some way to make my living and to raise my son."

He nodded. "Hannah, I would have you stay here for the time being, but by the summer I shall want you to meet me at court. I want you to see the queen again and enter her service."

"My lord, I am a fool no more. I have a child to care for and I am waiting for my husband."

"My child, you are a fool indeed if you think you can argue with me."

That checked me. "I do not mean to argue," I said pacifically. "But I don't want to be parted from my son, and I cannot go back into breeches."

"You can send him to a nurse. And you can be a fool in petticoats as well as breeches. There are many fools in petticoats, after all. You will not be an exception."

I bit the inside of my lip to keep myself calm despite my sense of danger. "My lord, he is only a baby still, and he does not speak. He is in a strange country and we neither of us know anybody. Please let him stay with me. Please let me keep him."

"If you insist on staying with him then you will have to remain here in the country with Amy," he warned me.

I measured the price I must pay to be Danny's mother and to my own surprise, I found it worth paying. I would not leave him, whatever it cost me.

"Very well," I said. I stepped back against the wall, out of the way of the porters carrying two great chairs and a table to the back of the wagon.

Lord Robert scowled at me, he had not thought I would put the child before my own ambition. "Oh, Hannah, you are not the woman I hoped you would be. A faithful wife and a devoted mother is not much use to me! Very well! I will send for you when I need you, probably May. You can bring the boy," he forestalled me. "But come as soon as I send for you. I will need your ears and your eyes at court."

Lord Robert rode out at noon, a cold March day, and his wife got up from her sick bed to see him go. She stood, silent again, like a woman made of snow, in the hall of the house as he clapped his hat on his head and swung his cape around his shoulders.

"I am sorry that you have been ill for all of my visit," he said brightly, as if speaking to a little-known host. "I have not seen you since dinner that first night."

She hardly seemed to hear him. She managed a blank smile, more like a grimace.

"I will hope that you are in better health and spirits when I come again."

"When will that be?" she asked quietly.

"I cannot say. I will send you a message."