However, in exploring the story I became interested not only in the scandal, bt in both Amy herself, and in the challenges facing Elizabeth and the country in the first few years of her reign. 

Amy Dudley
There are few details about Amy's life, and for my research I went to her childhood home - which is no longer standing, to the places that she stayed with her friends, and Norfolk public library for background material.

I even met a man who believed that the house he had lived in Oxfordshire had been rebuilt with stones from the house at Denchworth, and that the ghostly presence which every visitor to the house experienced, was the unquiet spirit of Amy Dudley.

Her father's position as a great landlord in the country is well-recorded, and his alliance with the Dudleys, especially in putting down the Kett rebellion, which is what brought Robert Dudley to Amy's home in the first place. Most of the interest in Amy is focussed on her tragedy and scandal of her death. Her journeys are recorded in little snippets, often from the Dudley account books, which I have built into the story of her visits.

We have one letter from her to a steward about domestic matters and details of money paid to her from the Dudley accounts. Amy's companion, Elizabeth Oddingsell and her family were real people, though there is no record of what they said or thought. As so often in early history, the personalities of anyone outside the court circle are hardly ever recorded. Amy's feelings of loyalty to the old religion, and her spirituality are my invention, though they are perhaps typical of many people at the time.

Court life
The characters at court are mostly based on the historical record. The hatred shown between Thomas Howard and Robert Dudley in the novel is based on recorded incidents, Elizabeth's scandalous love of Dudley, and her encouragement of other suitors was well known at the time, and English citizens were prosecuted for the sort of gossip that Amy overhears in my novel.

The scene where Blanche Parry begs the Queen to stop seeing Dudley is based on history; and the misleading visit by Mary Sidney to the Spanish Ambassador to tell him that the Queen would accept a proposal of marriage was reported by him to his master, and the document survives.

The scenes of full lovemaking between Elizabeth and Dudley are fiction, but his expectation that he would be King and the respect shown to him by Elizabeth's ladies and confidantes indicates to me that he had good reason to believe that Elizabeth would marry him. The use of a condom in their lovemaking is not recorded but is based on the fact that condoms are first mentioned in the (16th. As it happens, the earliest condom found in English archaeology is at Dudley Castle, but it comes from a later date.

No-one could invent a man like William Cecil! I have based his courage and cunning on contemporary reports. The war in Scotland was waged as I report it, including the terrified vacillation of Elizabeth and the calm determination of Cecil. It is Cecil who had the vision to fight and defeat an enemy that some historians have called a worse threat than the Armada; but undoubtedly Elizabeth learned how to be the great Queen that she became, in these early years.

Cecil did indeed write a letter for the Lords Protestant, send it to Scotland, get them to copy it, and then present it to the Queen to persuade her into the war. But I have not found any explanation for the delay in her letter to him ordering him to get better terms for the peace. The delay certainly took place, and it enabled him to get the best terms he could without interference from her. I suggest in the novel that she wrote the letter to please Dudley and delayed the letter to leave Cecil free; but this is my own speculation.

I became very interested in the decline of the currency and Elizabeth and Cecil's re-valuation that was successfully completed after my story ends in late September 1560. Thomas Gresham's advice and support in Antwerp were essential to this plot as I show. I was also fascinated in the idea of worthless coin as a metaphor for the life of the court. This metaphor runs through the novel because I think a lot of the life of Elizabeth's court revolved around the question of falsehood and value.

Laetitia Knollys is not much mentioned in the histories at this stage in her life; but she was employed as a lady in waiting as I show. Her interest to me, is because Robert Dudley married her for love, much later in life, and the rivalry between her and Elizabeth became explicit and vitriolic.

If there are other issues you would like to know about, you can post questions on the message board and I will answer them.