“Twelve years old?”

“Yes, sir,” I lied promptly, although in truth I was nearly fourteen.

“And a maid, though dressed as a lad.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No marriage arranged for you?”

“Not straightaway, sir.”

“But a betrothal in sight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who has your father picked out for you?”

“I am to marry a cousin from my mother’s family when I am sixteen,” I replied. “I don’t particularly wish it.”

“You’re a maid,” he scoffed. “All young maids say they don’t wish it.”

I shot a look at him which showed my resentment too clearly.

“Oho! Have I offended you, Mistress Boy?”

“I know my own mind, sir,” I said quietly. “And I am not a maid like any other.”

“Clearly. So what is your mind, Mistress Boy?”

“I don’t wish to marry.”

“And how shall you eat?”

“I should like to have my own shop, and print my own books.”

“And do you think a girl, even a pretty one in breeches, could manage without a husband?”

“I am sure I could,” I said. “Widow Worthing has a shop across the lanes.”

“A widow has had a husband to give her a fortune, she didn’t have to make her own.”

“A girl can make her own fortune,” I said stoutly. “I should think a girl could command a shop.”

“And what else can a girl command?” he teased me. “A ship? An army? A kingdom?”

“You will see a woman run a kingdom, you will see a woman can run a kingdom better than any in the world before,” I fired back, and then checked at the look on his face. I put my hand over my mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that,” I whispered. “I know that a woman should always be ruled by her father or husband.”

He looked at me as if he would hear more. “Do you think, Mistress Boy, that I will live to see a woman rule a kingdom?”

“In Spain it was done,” I said weakly. “Once. Queen Isabella.”

He nodded and let it go, as if drawing us both back from the brink of something dangerous. “So. D’you know your way to Whitehall Palace, Mistress Boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then when Mr. Dee has chosen the books he wants to see, you can bring them there, to my rooms. All right?”

I nodded.

“How is your father’s shop prospering?” he asked. “Selling many books? Many customers coming?”

“Some,” I said cautiously. “But it is early days for us yet.”

“Your gift does not guide him in his business, then?”

I shook my head. “It is not a gift. It is more like folly, as he says.”

“You speak out? And you can see what others cannot?”

“Sometimes.”

“And what did you see when you looked at me?”

His voice was pitched very low, as if he would lead me to whisper a reply. I raised my eyes from his boots, his strong legs, his beautiful surcoat, to the soft folds of his white ruff, his sensuous mouth, his half-lidded dark eyes. He was smiling at me, as if he understood that my cheeks, my ears, even my hair felt hot as if he were the sun from Spain on my head. “When I first saw you, I thought I knew you.”

“From before?” he asked.

“From a time to come,” I said awkwardly. “I thought that I would know you, in the days ahead.”

“Not if you are a lad!” He smiled to himself at the bawdiness of his thought. “So what condition will I be in when you know me, Mistress Boy? Am I to be a great man? Am I to command a kingdom while you command a bookshop?”

“Indeed, I hope you will be a great man,” I said stiffly. I would say nothing more, this warm teasing must not lull me into thinking that it was safe to confide in him.

“What d’you think of me?” he asked silkily.

I took a quiet breath. “I think that you would trouble a young woman who was not in breeches.”

He laughed out loud at that. “Please God that is a true seeing,” he said. “But I never fear trouble with girls, it is their fathers who strike me with terror.”

I smiled back, I could not help myself. There was something about the way his eyes danced when he laughed that made me want to laugh too, that made me long to say something extraordinarily witty and grown-up so that he would look at me and see me not as a child but as a young woman.

“And have you ever foretold the future and it came true?” he asked, suddenly serious.

The question itself was dangerous in a country that was always alert for witchcraft. “I have no powers,” I said quickly.

“But without exerting powers, can you see the future? It is given to some of us, as a holy gift, to know what might be. My friend here, Mr. Dee, believes that angels guide the course of mankind and may sometimes warn us against sin, just as the course of the stars can tell a man what his destiny might be.”

I shook my head doltishly at this dangerous talk, determined not to respond to him.

He looked thoughtful. “Can you dance or play an instrument? Learn a part in a masque and say your lines?”

“Not very well,” I said unhelpfully.

He laughed at my reluctance. “Well, we shall see, Mistress Boy. We shall see what you can do.”

I gave my little boyish bow and took care to say nothing more.

Next day, carrying a parcel of books and a carefully rolled scroll of manuscript, I walked across the town, past the Temple Bar and past the green fields of Covent Garden to Whitehall Palace. It was cold with a sleety rain which forced my head down and made me pull my cap low over my ears. The wind off the river was as icy as if it were coming straight from the Russias, it blew me up King’s Street to the very gates of Whitehall Palace.

I had never been inside a royal palace before, and I had thought I would just give the books to the guards on the gate, but when I showed them the note that Lord Robert had scrawled, with the Dudley seal of the bear and staff at the bottom, they bowed me through as though I were a visiting prince, and ordered a man to guide me.

Inside the gates, the palace was like a series of courtyards, each beautifully built, with a great garden in the middle set with apple trees and arbors and seats. The soldier from the gate led me across the first garden and gave me no time to stop and stare at the finely dressed lords and ladies who, wrapped in furs and velvets against the cold, were playing at bowls on the green. Inside the door, swung open by another pair of soldiers, there were more fine people in a great chamber, and behind that great room another, and then another. My guide led me through door after door until we came to a long gallery and Robert Dudley was at the far end of it, and I was so relieved to find him, the only man I knew in the whole palace, that I ran a few steps toward him and called out: “My lord!”

The guard hesitated, as if he would block me from getting any closer, but Robert Dudley waved him aside. “Mistress Boy!” he exclaimed. He got to his feet and then I saw his companion. It was the young king, King Edward, fifteen years of age and beautifully dressed in plush blue velvet but with a face the color of skimmed milk and thinner than any lad I had ever seen before.

I dropped to my knee, holding tight to my father’s books and trying to doff my cap at the same time, as Lord Robert remarked: “This is the girl-boy. Don’t you think she would be a wonderful player?”

I did not look up but I heard the king’s voice, thinned with pain. “You take such fancies, Dudley. Why should she be a player?”

“Her voice,” Dudley said. “Such a voice, very sweet, and that accent, part Spanish and part London, I could listen to her forever. And she holds herself like a princess in beggar’s clothes. Don’t you think she’s a delightful child?”

I kept my head down so that he should not see my delighted beam. I hugged the words to my skinny chest: “a princess in beggar’s clothes,” “a sweet voice,” “delightful.”

The young king returned me to the real world. “Why, what part should she play? A girl, playing a boy, playing a girl. Besides, it’s against Holy Writ for a girl to dress as a boy.” His voice tailed away into a cough which shook him like a bear might shake a dog.