“I’m outside,” Johnny said. “I need to see you.”

“Come up,” Lizzie said at once. “Top floor, take the lift. I’ll be waiting.”

“I’m out in the street,” Johnny said. She could hear the quiver in his voice. “They wouldn’t let me into the foyer. They threatened to call the police. Can you come down and meet me?”

“Sure,” Lizzie said. She was already halfway to the door. “I’m on my way down. Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”

12

Amy: The Tower of London, March 1554

“Mind your step,” the warder said, steadying me with a hand under my elbow as I slipped on the worn stone in the half dark. I could hear the drip of water and feel the moisture and the despair that permeated the air. My head spun and my ears rang with noise, the screams and shouts of the demented, the lost, those abandoned to death and darkness.

I will be strong.

I had told myself this every day for the past six months as the sickly, humid days of summer had given way to the damp misery of a grey autumn and finally the cold desolation of winter. Living on the charity of my mother’s relatives had not been easy. The ties that bound our family were strong but it felt all wrong that I had slipped from benefactress to pensioner.

The memory of court, of golden sunshine and masques, mocked me as each dreary day passed. To have fallen so far, so fast, to have known the riches of ambition and success and now to be “poor, dear Amy,” an object of pity, curiosity and malice, left a bitter taste. I could blame my father-in-law for overreaching himself and trying to set the usurper Jane Grey on the throne of England, I could blame King Edward for dying so inconveniently, but in truth I mostly blamed Robert. I tried to love him still but it was hard. I was angry and alone. The man I had entrusted with my future had led us all to destruction.

Robert had failed. All the work that he and my father and the Duke of Northumberland had done to build their power and authority in East Anglia lay in the ashes of Sawston Hall and from that had flowed all else: Mary’s escape, her proclamation as Queen, the Duke’s downfall and the shocking executions of Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley.

My mother had written to me from Norfolk, reminding me—as though I required it—that the destruction of Sawston at Robert’s hands had brought even greater hardship to my sister Anna. Perhaps being a helpless witness to so much pain and bloodshed had hardened me. I told her nothing of my sickness on hearing the news but wrote back saying that now Mary was Queen, Antony Huddleston would be well rewarded for the loyalty he had shown to her. Such were the murky waters in which I now swam, my loyalties divided between the old and the new, between family and politics just as my mother’s had been at the time of Kett’s rebellion. Now I was the supplicant; I could have asked Anna for help when, just as I predicted, Antony was raised high in the new Queen’s favour whilst I was married to a traitor who was condemned to execution, but I would not demean myself. I know it would have given her pleasure to refuse to help me.