The weather grew warmer and the queen lost some of her glow. In the first week of May, having left it as late as she could, she said farewell to the court and went through the doors of her privy chamber to the darkened interior where she must stay until the birth of her boy, and for six weeks after that, before being churched. The only people to see her would be her ladies; the queen’s council would have to take their orders from the king, acting in her stead. Messages would be passed into the chamber by her ladies, though it was already being whispered that the queen had asked the king to visit her privately. She could not tolerate the thought of not seeing him for three months, however improper it was that he should come to her at such a time.

      Thinking of the look that Elizabeth had shot the king, and how he had followed her swaying hips down the long gallery like a hungry dog, I thought that the queen was well advised to ask him to visit, whatever the tradition of royal births. Elizabeth was not a girl that anyone should trust with their husband, especially when the wife was locked away for a full quarter of the year.

      The baby was a little late, the weeks came and went with no sign of him. The midwives predicted a stronger baby for taking his own time and an easier labour when it started, which it must do, any day now. But as May went by they started to remark that it was an exceptionally late baby. The nursemaids rolled their swaddling bandages and started to talk about getting fresh herbs for strewing. The doctors smiled and tactfully suggested that a lady as spiritual and otherworldly as the queen might have mistaken the date of conception; we might have to wait till the end of the month.

      While the long hot dull weeks of waiting dragged on there was an embarrassing moment when some rumour set the city of London alight with the news that the queen had given birth to a son. The city went wild, ringing bells and singing in the streets, and the revellers roistered all the way to Hampton Court to learn that nothing had happened, that we were all still waiting, that there was nothing to do but wait.

      I sat with Queen Mary every day in the shrouded room. Sometimes I read to her from the Bible in Spanish, sometimes I gave her little pieces of news about the court, or told her Will’s latest nonsense. I took flowers in for her, hedgerow flowers like daisies, and then the little roses in bud, anything to give her a sense that there was still an outside world which she would rejoin soon. She took them with a smile of pleasure. ‘What, are the roses in bud already?’

      ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

      ‘I shall be sorry to miss the sight of them this year.’

      As I had feared, the darkness and quietness of the room was preying on her spirits. With the curtains drawn and the candles lit, it was too dark to sew for very long without gaining a splitting headache, it was a chore to read. The doctors had ruled that she should not have music, and the ladies soon ran out of conversation. The air grew stale and heavy, filled with woodsmoke from the hot fire, and the sighs of her imprisoned companions. After a morning spent with her I found I was coming out of the doors at a run, desperate to be out again in the fresh air and sunshine.

      The queen had started the confinement with a serene expectation of giving birth soon. Like any woman facing a first labour she was a little afraid, the more so since she was really too old to have a first child. But she had been borne up by her conviction that God had given her this child, that the baby had quickened when the Papal legate had returned to England, that this conception was a sign of divine favour. Mary, as God’s handmaiden, had been confident. But as the days wore on into weeks, her contentment was undermined by the delay. The good wishes that came pouring in from all around the country were like a string of demands for a son. The letters from her father-in-law, the emperor, inquiring as to the delay, read like a reproach. The doctors said that all the signs showed that the baby was coming soon, but still he did not come.

      Jane Dormer went around with a face like thunder. Anyone who dared to ask after the health of the queen was stared out of countenance for their impertinence. ‘Do I look like some village witch?’ she demanded of one woman in my hearing. ‘Do I look like an astrologer, casting spells, guessing birth dates? No? The Queen’s Grace will take to her bed when she thinks fit and not before, and we shall have a prince when God grants it and not before.’

      It was a staunch defence and it could hold off the courtiers, but it could not protect the queen from her own painful growing unease. I had seen her unhappy and fearful before and I recognised the gauntness of her face as the shine was rubbed off her.

      Elizabeth, in contrast, now free to go where she would, ride where she liked, boat, walk, play at sports, grew more and more confident as the summer drew on. She had lost the fleshiness that had come with her illness, she was filled with energy and zest for life. The Spanish adored her – her colouring alone was fascinating to them. When she rode her great grey hunter in her green riding habit with her copper hair spread out on her shoulders they called her Enchantress, and Beautiful Brass-head. Elizabeth would smile and protest at the fuss they made, and so encourage them even more.

      King Philip never checked them, though a more careful brother-in-law would have guarded against Elizabeth’s head being turned by the flattery of his court. But he never said anything to rein in her growing vanity. Nor did he speak now of her marrying and going away from England, nor of her visit to his aunt in Hungary. Indeed, he made it clear that Elizabeth was an honoured permanent member of the court and heir to the throne.

      I thought this was mostly policy on his part; but then one day I was looking from the palace window to a sheltered lawn on the south side of the palace and I saw a couple walking, heads close together, down the yew tree allée, half-hidden and then half-revealed by the dark strong trees. I smiled as I watched, thinking at first that it was one of the queen’s ladies with a Spanish courtier, and the queen would laugh when I told her of this clandestine courtship.

      But then the girl turned her head and I saw a flash from under her dark hood, the unmistakable glint of copper hair. The girl was Elizabeth, and the man walking beside her, close enough to touch but not touching, was Prince Philip: Mary’s husband. Elizabeth had a book open in her hands, her head was bowed over it, she was the very picture of the devout student, but her walk was the gliding hip-swaying stroll of a woman with a man matching his step to hers.

      All at once, I was reminded of the first time I had seen Elizabeth, when she had teased Tom Seymour, her stepmother’s husband, to chase her in the garden at Chelsea. This might be seven years later, but it was the same aroused hot-blooded girl who slid a dark sideways glance at another woman’s husband and invited him to come a little closer.

      The king looked back at the palace, wondering how many people might be watching from the windows, and I expected him to weigh the danger of being seen, and take the Spanish way, the cautious way. But instead he gave a reckless shrug of his shoulders and fell into step a little closer to Elizabeth, who gave a start of innocent surprise, and put her long index finger under the word in her book so that she should not lose her place. I saw her look up at him, the colour rising in her cheeks, her eyes wide with innocence, but the sly smile on her lips. He slipped his arm around her waist so that he could walk with her, looking over her shoulder at the passage in her book as if they both could see the words, as if they cared for anything but the other’s touch, as if they were not utterly absorbed in the sound of their own rapid breathing.