“If she’s there yet. Stop at the chapel. A terrible fight has broken out between the sisters just outside the chapel doors. So go by there first.” She glanced at the boots that both Rose and Andrew were carrying. “Doubt if they’ll be riding together, but take them anyway.” Rose stood still. The chapel? Which way was the chapel?

“What are you standing there for, girl?”

“The chapel?”

“The chapel!” Mrs. Belson wailed. “Have you never been to the chapel before?” She was rising on her tiptoes, her face coloring bright red. “Off the long gallery. East wing, for heaven’s sake. Run, child!”

As Rose ran down the long gallery, she could hear a terrible screeching. The two princesses were surrounded by an assortment of servants in addition to their ladies-in-waiting, and were actually being restrained.

“It’s mine,” Elizabeth shouted.

“It is the Tudor Rose. It only belongs to the next female in line. Where did you get it?”

“My mother.”

“That witch! Anne Boleyn.”

A dignified middle-aged woman stood between them, looking furiously at one, then the other. “Both of your highnesses, be quiet this instant. There shall be no more fighting.”

This must be Elizabeth’s tutor, Kat Champernowne, Rose thought. She had been away with a broken leg when Rose came on her first visit. She walked with a cane that she now lifted up and batted about in the air.

“And to think this outburst is right in the sight of God, just outside his chapel.”

“We are always under God’s eyes. Even thieves,” Princess Mary hissed at Princess Elizabeth.

“You are all under the king’s eyes.” A tall, dignified man strode up to the gathering. It was the Gentleman Usher Cornwallis, the head of the staff at Hatfield. Rose had met him on the first day of working there. “An order from His Majesty has just been received. You are all summoned to Greenwich to see His Majesty, your father, before he sets out for the campaign in France. You are to begin to prepare immediately for your departure.”

Orders flew through the princesses’ chambers. Sara and Rose were charged with packing the gowns.

“You’ll have to have proper gowns yourself, Rose,” Sara said, looking up as they folded gowns into two large trunks.

“Me? Why me? Am I to go too?”

“Of course.”

“But I’m a servant. I’m surely not going to a ball.”

“When you travel to where the king and queen are in residence, you must wear the proper livery.”

“Livery?”

“The proper dress for Greenwich.”

“Is it so different from what I wear now?”

“Black, all black, except for a white ruff. There we are expected to just erase ourselves, fade into the background. And not to wear the harsh-spun fabrics of the country folk.”

“All right.” Rose paused while brushing out one of the princess’s gowns. “Tell me something, Sara.”