"Times will change," Robert said encouragingly. "Changing already."

"You'd be ready for new times, for one," Will said, his spirit rising up. "Since in the last reign you were one of the greatest lords and in this one you were a traitor waiting for the ax. I imagine change would be very welcome to you. What d'you hope from the next, my lord? What has the next queen promised you?"

I felt a little shiver sweep over me. It was the very question that Robert Dudley's servant had posed, the very question that everyone was asking. What might not come to Robert, if Elizabeth adored him?

"Nothing but good for the country," Robert said easily with a pleasant smile. "Come and dine with us, Will. You're among friends."

"All right," he said, seating himself at the table and drawing a bowl toward him. I hitched Danny on to the chair beside me so that he could eat from my bowl and I took a gla.s.s of wine that Lord Robert poured for me.

"Here's to us," Robert said, raising his gla.s.s in an ironic toast. "A heartbroken queen, an absent king, a lost baby, a queen in waiting and two fools and a reformed traitor. Here's health."

"Two fools and an old traitor," Will said, raising his gla.s.s. "Three fools together."

Summer 1558 Almost by default, I found myself back in the queen's service. She was so anxious and suspicious of everyone around her that she would be served only by people who had been with her from the earliest days. She hardly seemed to notice that I had been away from her for more than two years, and was now a woman grown, and dressed like a woman. She liked to hear me read to her in Spanish, and she liked me to sit by her bed while she slept. The deep sadness that had invaded her with the failure of her second pregnancy meant that she had no curiosity about me. I told her that my father had died, that I had married my betrothed, and that we had a child. She was interested only that my husband and I were separated - he in France, safe, I hoped, while I was in England. I did not name the town of Calais, she was as mortified by the loss of the town, England's glory, as she was shamed by the loss of the baby.

"How can you bear not to be with your husband?" she asked suddenly, after three long hours of silence one gray afternoon.

"I miss him," I said, startled at her suddenly speaking to me. "But I hope to find him again. I will go to France as soon as it is possible, I will go and look for him. Or I hope he will come to me. If you would help me send a message it would ease my heart."

She turned toward the window and looked out at the river. "I keep a fleet of ships ready for the king to come to me," she said. "And horses and lodgings all along the road from Dover to London. They are all waiting for him. They spend their lives, they earn their livings in waiting for him. A small army of men does nothing but wait for him. I, the Queen of England, his own wife, waits for him. Why does he not come?"

There was no answer that I could give her. There was no answer that anyone could give her. When she asked the Spanish amba.s.sador he bowed low and murmured that the king had to be with his army - she must understand the need of that - the French were still threatening his lands. It satisfied her for a day, but the next day, when she looked for him, the Spanish amba.s.sador had gone.

"Where is he?" the queen asked. I was holding her hood, waiting for her maid to finish arranging her hair. Her beautiful chestnut hair had gone gray and thin now, when it was brushed out it looked spa.r.s.e and dry. The lines on her face and the weariness in her eyes made her seem far older than her forty-two years.

"Where is who, Your Grace?" I asked.

"The Spanish amba.s.sador, Count Feria?"

I stepped forward and handed her hood to her maid, wishing that I could think of something clever to divert her. I glanced at Jane Dormer who was close friends with the Spanish count and saw a swift look of consternation cross her face. There would be no help from her. I gritted my teeth and told her the truth. "I believe he has gone to see the princess."

The queen turned around to look at me, her eyes shocked. "Why, Hannah? Why would he do that?"

I shook my head. "How would I know, Your Grace? Does he not go to present his compliments to the princess now and then?"

"No. He does not. For most of his time in England she has been under house arrest, a suspected traitor, and he himself urged me to execute her. Why would he go to pay his compliments now?"

None of us answered. She took the hood from the waiting woman's hands and put it on, meeting her own honest eyes in the mirror. "The king will have ordered him to go. I know Feria, he is not a man to plot willfully. The king will have ordered him to go."

She was silent for a moment, thinking what she should do. I kept my gaze down, I could not bear to look up and see her, facing the knowledge that her own husband was sending messages to her heir, to her rival, to his mistress.

When she turned back to us her expression was calm. "Hannah, a word with you, please," she said, extending her hand.

I went to her side and she took my arm and leaned on me slightly as we walked from the room to her presence chamber. "I want you to go to Elizabeth," she said quietly, as they opened the doors. There was hardly anyone outside waiting to see her. They were all at Hatfield. "Just go as if for a visit. Tell her you have recently come back from Calais and wanted to see how she did. Can you do that?"

"I would have to take my son," I temporized.

"Take him," she nodded. "And see if you can find out from Elizabeth herself, or from her ladies, what Count Feria wanted with her."

"They may tell me nothing," I said uncomfortably. "Surely, they will know I serve you."

"You can ask," she said. "And you are the only friend that I can trust who will gain admission to Elizabeth. You have always pa.s.sed between us. She likes you."

"Perhaps the amba.s.sador was making nothing more than a courtesy visit."

"Perhaps," she said. "But it may be that the king is pressing her to marry the Prince of Savoy. She has sworn to me that she will not have him but Elizabeth has no principles, she has only appearances. If the king promised to support her claim to be my heir, she might think it worth her while to marry his cousin. I have to know."

"When d'you want me to go?" I asked unwillingly.

"At first light tomorrow," she said. "And don't write to me, I am surrounded by spies. I will wait for you to tell me what she is planning when you come back to me."

Queen Mary released my arm and went on alone into dinner. As the n.o.blemen and the gentry rose to their feet as she walked toward the high table in the great hall I noticed how small she seemed: a diminutive woman overwhelmed by her duties in a hostile world. I watched her step up to her throne, seat herself and look around her depleted court with her tight determined smile and thought - not for the first time - that she was the most courageous woman I had ever known. A woman with the worst luck in the world.

It was a merry ride to Hatfield for Danny and me. He rode the horse astride before me until he grew too tired, and then I strapped him to my back and he slept, rocked by the jolting. I had an escort of two men to keep me safe; since the epidemic of illness of the winter, and the hardship of one bad harvest after another, the roads were continually threatened by highwaymen, bandits or just vagrants and beggars who would shout for money and threaten violence. But with the two men trotting behind us, Daniel and I were lighthearted. The weather was fine, the rain had stopped at last, and the sun was so hot by midday that we were pleased to break our fast in a field, sheltering in a wood, or sometimes by a river or stream. I let Danny paddle his feet, or sit bare-a.r.s.ed in the water while it splashed around him. He was steady on his feet now, he made little rushes forward and back to me, and he continually demanded to be lifted upward to see more, to touch things, or simply to pat my face and turn my gaze this way and that.

As we rode I sang to him, the Spanish songs of my childhood, and I was certain that he heard me. His little hand would wave in time to the music, he would give a little wriggle of pleasure when I started singing, but he never joined in the tune. He remained as silent as a leveret in hiding, as a fawn in the bracken.

The old palace at Hatfield had been the royal nursery for generations, chosen for its clean air and proximity to London. It was an old building, small-windowed and dark-beamed, and the men led the way to the front door so that Danny and I might dismount and go inside while they took the horses away to the ramshackle stable block at a little distance from the house.

There was no one in the hall to greet us but a boy bringing in logs for the fire which was kept going, even in midsummer. "They're all in the garden," he said. "Acting a play."

His gesture directed me to a door at the rear of the hall and with Danny in my arms I opened it, followed the stone corridor to another door and then stepped out into the sunshine.

What playacting there had been was clearly over, and what was left was a romp. Veils of cloth of gold and silver and overturned chairs were scattered around the orchard, and Elizabeth's ladies were running in all directions from a man in the center of the circle with a dark scarf over his face to blindfold him. As I watched he caught a flying skirt and drew a girl to him but she wriggled free and ran away laughing. They gathered around him and with much giggling and cooing they turned him round and round until he was dizzy and then they retreated. Again he dashed and lunged, while they ran this way and that, giggling with that heady mixture of girlish playfulness and female arousal. Among them, her red hair flying loose, her hood cast away, her face flushed and laughing, was the princess. She was not the Elizabeth I had seen white-faced with terror. She was not the princess I had seen bloated on her bed, sick to her very bones with fear. She was a princess coming into the midsummer of her life, coming into her womanhood, coming to the throne. She was a fairytale princess, beautiful, powerful, willful, infallible.

"Well, glory be," I whispered to myself, as skeptical as any fool.

As I watched she tapped the blindfolded man on the shoulder and made to run back again. This time he was too quick for her. His hand flashed out, she sprang back just too slowly, he s.n.a.t.c.hed her at the waist and though she struggled he held her close. He must have felt her panting against him. He must have smelled the perfume in her hair. He must have known her at once.

"I have caught you!" he called out. "Who is it?"

"You have to guess! You have to guess!" the ladies cried.

He ran his hand over her forehead, her hair, her nose, her lips. "A beauty," he said certainly. He was rewarded by a gale of shocked laughter.

Impertinently, he let his hand stray down over her chin, down her neck, he took her throat in his hand. I saw the color flame into Elizabeth's cheeks and I realized she was on fire with desire at his touch. She did not step back from him, she did not move to check him. She was ready to stand before him and let him finger her all over, watched by all her court.

I moved a little forward to see this man better, but the blindfold covered all of his face, I could see only his thick dark hair and the strong square shoulders. I thought I knew who this man was.

He held her firmly, and there was a little whisper almost of dismay from her ladies as he gripped her with one hand at the waist, and with the other traced the border of the neck of her gown, his fingertips brushing the tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Slowly, tantalizingly, he slid his hand down the front of her gown over the embroidered stomacher, past the girdle at her waist, over the thick skirt of her gown at the front as if he would pat her s.e.x, shielded by petticoats, as if he would touch her like a wh.o.r.e. Still the princess did not stop him, still she did not step back from him. She stood stock-still pressed against this man with his one hand around her waist, pulling her close to him as if she were a loose-lived maid who would offer a squeeze and a kiss. She did not resist even when his hand went down the front of her gown, to her very crotch beneath her petticoats, and then round her back to take hold of her b.u.t.tocks in his hand, then he slid his other hand down from her waist, so that he was embracing her, so that he had her a.r.s.e in both hands, as if she were his own woman.

Elizabeth gave a little soft moan and twisted from his grip, almost falling back amongst her ladies. "Who was it? Who was it?" they chanted, relieved that she had freed herself from his embrace.

"I give up," he said. "I cannot play some foolish game. I have touched the very curves of heaven."

He pulled the blindfold from his eyes and I saw his face. His eyes met Elizabeth's. He knew exactly who it had been in his arms, he had known from the moment he had caught her, as he had intended to do; as she had intended him to do. He had caressed her in front of all the court, caressed her as an accepted lover, and she had let him stroke her as if she were a wh.o.r.e. She smiled at him, her knowing desirous smile, and he smiled back.

Of course, the man was my lord Robert Dudley.

"And what are you doing here, child?" he asked me before dinner, walking on the terrace, the ladies of Elizabeth's little court observing our progress while pretending not to watch.

"Queen Mary sent me to pay her compliments to Elizabeth."

"Oho, my little spy, are you at work again?"

"Yes, and most unwillingly."

"And what does the queen want to know?" He paused for a moment. "Anything about William Pickering? About me?"

I shook my head. "Nothing that I know of."

He drew me to a stone seat. There was honeysuckle growing on the wall behind me and the smell was very sweet. He reached over and plucked a flower. The petals, scarlet and honey, lolled like the tongue of a snake. He brushed my neck with it. "So what does the queen want?"

"She wants to know what Count Feria was doing here," I said simply. "Is he here?"

"Left yesterday."

"What did he want?"

"He brought a message from the king. Queen Mary's own beloved husband. A faithless dog, isn't he, the randy old Spaniard?"

"Why d'you say that?"

"Mistress Boy, I have a wife who does me no service, and shows me no kindness, but not even I would court her own sister under her nose and shame her while she was still living."

I swayed in my seat and took hold of his hand which was still playing with the flower. "He is courting Elizabeth?"

"The Pope has been approached to give permission for their marriage," he said flatly. "How is that for Spanish punctilio for you? If the queen lives then it's my guess that Philip will apply for an annulment of their marriage and marry Elizabeth. If the queen dies, then Elizabeth is heir to the throne and an even richer plum for the picking. He will snap her up within the year."

I looked at him, my face quite blank with horror. "This cannot be," I said, appalled. "It's a betrayal. It's the worst thing he could do to her. The worst thing he could do to her in all the world."

"It's an unexpected move," he said. "Disagreeable for a loving wife."

"The queen would die of grief and shame. To be put aside, as her mother was put aside? And for Anne Boleyn's daughter?"

He nodded. "As I said, a faithless Spanish dog."

"And Elizabeth?"

He glanced over my shoulder and he rose to his feet. "You can ask her yourself."

I slid into a curtsey, and then came up. Elizabeth's black eyes snapped at me. She did not like to see me seated beside Robert Dudley with him stroking my neck with honeysuckle flowers.

"Princess."

"I heard you were back. My lord said that you had become a woman. I did not expect to see you quite so..."

I waited.

"Fat," she said.

Instead of being insulted, as she intended, I giggled out loud at the childish jealous rudeness of her.

At once her eyes danced too. Elizabeth never sulked.

"Whereas you, Princess, are more beautiful than ever," I said smoothly.

"I hope so. And what were you talking about with your heads so close together?"

"About you," I said simply. "The queen sent me to find out how you did. And I was glad to come and see you."

"I warned you not to leave it too late," she said, her gesture taking in the waiting women, the lounging handsome men, the courtiers from London who saw me recognize them and looked a little abashed. A couple of members of the queen's council stepped back from my scrutiny; with them was an envoy of France, and a minor prince or two.

"I see your ladyship keeps a merry court," I said evenly. "As you should. And I cannot join you, even if you would condescend to have me. I have to serve your sister. She does not have a merry court, she has few friends. I would not leave her now."

"Then you must be the only person in England who has not deserted her," she said cheerfully. "I took on her cook last week. Does she get anything to eat at all?"

"She manages," I said dryly. "And even the Spanish amba.s.sador, Count Feria, her greatest friend and trusted councillor, was missing from court when I left."

She shot a quick look at Robert Dudley and I saw him nod permission for her to speak.

"I refused his request," she said gently. "I have no plans to marry anyone. You can a.s.sure the queen of that, for it is true."

I gave her a little curtsey. "I am glad not to have to take her any news which would make her yet more unhappy."

"I wish she would feel some distress for the people of the country," Elizabeth said sharply. "The burning of heretics goes on, Hannah, the agony of innocent people. You should tell the queen that her sadness at the loss of a child who never was is nothing compared with the grief of a woman who sees her son go to the stake. And there are hundreds of women who have been forced to watch that."

Robert Dudley came to my rescue. "Shall we dine?" he asked lightly. "And there will be music after dinner. I demand a dance."

"Only one?" she queried, her mood lifting at once.

"Only one," he said.

She made a little flirtatious pouting face.

"The one that starts when the music starts after dinner and ends when the sun comes up and no one can dance another step," he said. "That one."

"And what shall we do then, when we have danced ourselves to a standstill?" she asked provocatively.

I looked from her to him, I could hardly believe the intimacy of their tone. Anyone who heard them would have thought them to be lovers in the very first days of their desire.

"We will do whatever you wish, of course," he said, his voice like silk. "But I know what I would wish."

"What?" she breathed.

"To lie with..."

"With?"