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Majesty, Grandfather took two naps a day, as regular as the tick of his beloved clocks. Sometimes I would be there when he awoke to bring him a tankard of small beer to ease his thirst on awaking.
    I did so today. The smile he gave me was of such sweetness.
    ‘Good afternoon, granddaughter,’ he greeted me. ‘Are you recovered from your galliards and your corantos last night?’
    ‘Grandfather, I am. Have you heard the news?’
    ‘That your sister has left or that you are to go to London?’
    I laughed. Of course he would know. Grandfather knew everything. He had, in his youth, been one of the most trusted advisors ofthe Crown, seeing so much of the Queen that she, making sport with him over the sombre clothes he always wore, dubbed him her ‘black husband’—much to the stormy looks from my grandmother, though she hid them from Her Majesty.
    ‘That I am to go to London.’
    ‘A little wounding that my granddaughter looks so happy to be leaving us behind in our provincial hovel while she seeks the gilded guise of the courtier.’
    ‘My lord grandfather! You know I have no time for Court doings. But Loseley will be flat without my dearest sister, Bett.’
    ‘And flatter still without you, sweet Ann. But I have a bone to pick with you, young woman. I find neither my Ovid nor my Catullus and unless your sisters have hired a Latin master or your grandmother has taken to reading the classics instead of receipt books on the pickling of cowcumbers, then the culprit must be you.’
    ‘I am sorry. I will return them to your shelves at once.’
    ‘Thank you, Ann.’ And then as an afterthought: ‘Tell not your father of your reading habits though. There are passages in Ovid that a young girl’s eyes should not be exposed to.’
    I knew he talked of the
Ars Amtoria
which indeed had brought a flush to my cheek when I delved discreetly into it, yet I pretended I knew not what he referred to.
    ‘If he thought you had read such passages of Ovid your father would choke on his plate of meats.’
    ‘But the Queen reads Ovid, Grandfather, and has done since she was my own age. My cousin Francis told me so. His father was her Latin Secretary so he must be right.’
    ‘The Queen can do what she likes. The same is not true of all her subjects. I hope I have done the right thing to encourage you to read as widely as I have.’
    ‘Of course you have, Grandfather. How can learning and knowledge ever be a bad thing?’
    ‘In men, yes. But women? Learning is dangerous in women; many say it makes them cunning, like foxes.’
    I kissed my grandfather’s brow. ‘Then I will be cunning as a fox and hide my learning from all but you.’
    ‘I fear it will curb your taste for ordinary life.’
    ‘And frighten off husbands?’
    ‘God ordained women to be wives and mothers. It is an important estate.’
    ‘I know, Grandfather. Yet perhaps it might frighten off the wrong kind of husband.’
    ‘Your grandmother and I will miss you.’
    I took his hand, all seamed with veins, and kissed it.
    ‘After all, who will be Ratcatcher in Chief when you are gone?’
    The thought of Frances’ revelation about my suitor came into my mind, the one shadow on my newly sunny horizon. ‘Grandfather…’ The hesitation in my voice made him look up.
    ‘Yes, Ann?’
    ‘Do you know of a gentleman called Manners?’
    The expression in his eyes, like that of a weasel with someone’s pet mouse in its jaws, told me all.
    ‘Ann, my Ann,’ he replied gently, the paper thinness of his skin suddenly reminding me of the skull in the portrait. ‘You have to wed some time. There is no other calling for a woman.’
    I walked out into the grounds to imprint them on my memory. I loved this house, its peace and stark grey beauty. But I knew also that life was not as easy for others as it had been for us. I had seen the hordes of wandering beggars, driven off their land by enclosures for sheep, and how they ended up being shuffled from parish to parish, or chased