“When William and I fell in love, his father would point at me in a room full of people and cry out, ‘This one was born in the Tower!’ He was a harsh Puritan and friend to Essex; he opposed my mother’s annulment and sat in judgment during her trial. Even so, she encouraged me to wait for William when his father sent him to Madrid to forget me. Only the huge dowry my father scraped together changed his mind and even after we were married, my father-in-law never lost an opportunity to speak badly of my mother. She has been blamed for bringing about these strange times of Regicide and brother fighting brother, all order turned on its head; yet I believe your mother, and mine, were women of courage,” said Lady Anne.

There had been a stone at Barbara’s core, which her body had accommodated these long years. It had weighed down her hopes, stopped her marrying and often blocked off laughter. As Lady Anne spoke, she felt it shifting. She had expected to find someone brittle, ready to defend her mother and deny her past. Instead, here was a woman of deep understanding, who recognized and shared in Barbara’s long-held grief.

Barbara took from her pocket a worn handkerchief, embroidered with the initials A.T. She did not dab at her streaming eyes but opened it. Nestled within were a diamond ring and a string of pearls; the times she had wanted to pawn them were without number, but her mother’s wishes stopped her. She thought it might upset Lady Anne to know that the ring had been sent to the fifteen-year-old Frankie by the fourteen-year-old Earl of Essex, with a terse note as to its value but no word of love; that Frankie had given it to a cunning woman who had pawned it; that it had been retrieved and later sent to Anne Turner during her detention, along with the pearls; that Anne had passed them to her confessor, hidden in this handkerchief, while she stood on the tumbril seconds before death.

Barbara put the ring and pearls into Lady Anne’s hand and said only, “Your mother gave these pearls and this ring to mine. Their friendship was the most important of my mother’s life.” Lady Anne took them both and held them in her hands as if she could feel the two women through them. She slipped the ring onto the index finger of her right hand. It was a little big but looked well against her white skin. The pearls she rubbed against her cheek, closing her eyes.

“Are these Margaret’s?” she asked.

Barbara nodded.

“My mother told me about her sister and these pearls. She hoped the jailer had not stolen them and that they had been placed in your mother’s coffin.”