could find ourselves supplying books to the king, a scholarly king, and our fortune would be made. But if they found our books seditious or blasphemous or heretical, too questioning, or too filled with the new knowledge, then we could be thrown into prison or into exile again or to our deaths.
‘You’re very gracious, sir. Shall I bring my books to the palace? The light here is very poor for reading, there is no need to demean yourselves to my little shop …’
The older man did not release me. He was still holding my chin and looking into my face.
‘I have studies of the Bible,’ my father went on rapidly. ‘Some very ancient in Latin and Greek and also books in other languages. I have some drawings of Roman temples with their proportions explained, I have a copy of some mathematical tables for numbers which I was given but of course I have not the learning to understand them, I have some drawings of anatomy from the Greek …’
Finally the man called John Dee let me go. ‘May I see your library?’
I saw my father’s reluctance to let the man browse the shelves and drawers of his collection. He was afraid that some of the books might now, under some new ruling, be banned as heretical. I knew that the books of secret wisdom in Greek and Hebrew were always hidden, behind the sliding back of the bookshelf. But even the ones on show might lead us into trouble in these unpredictable times. ‘I will bring them out to you here?’
‘No, I will come inside.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ he surrendered. ‘It will be an honour to me.’
He led the way into the inner room and John Dee followed him. The young lord, Robert Dudley, took a seat on one of the stools and looked at me with interest.
‘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 straight away, 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
