“Why did Queen Mary not name you?” I demand of my mother, forced into honesty with her for once, driven by resentment into frankness. “Why did she not name me?”

My mother’s face is darkened with impotent fury. She will now have to serve as loving cousin and lady-in-waiting in Elizabeth’s rooms, and she does not expect a girl young enough to be her daughter, and with every reason to dislike her, to be a particularly generous mistress. My mother, who married her master of horse in order to reassure Queen Mary that she had no plans to marry a man with a claim to the throne, and no royal-blooded son on the way, now finds herself with no great name and no heir either, for Adrian Stokes is a nobody and all her babies from him have died. She made herself unimportant to please Queen Mary, but finds that all she has done is step back for Queen Elizabeth.

“Will you put that damned rat out of here?” she shouts.

I have a new puppy, a pretty pug called Jo, who comes with me everywhere. I bend down and quietly put her out of the room. She whines and scrabbles at the door and then sits sorrowfully on the wooden floorboards outside, to wait for me.

“Queen Mary always had strong family feeling,” my mother says through her teeth. “Despite it all. She came to the throne by her father’s will and she did not think it should be overturned. He recognized Elizabeth as his child and in his will he named her to come after her sister, Queen Mary. He named my line to follow Elizabeth only if she has no heirs, and so that is what the queen willed.” She takes a breath and I can see her fighting to master her temper, a struggle so vigorous that I think she may give herself a fit. “In accordance with tradition. In accordance with King Henry’s will, God bless him.”

“But what about me?” I demand. I think I have been saying this for all my life. “What about me?”

“You have to wait,” my mother says, as if I am not eighteen and desperate to get on with my life, to eat at the feast, to dance at all the celebrations, to wear the beautiful gowns from the wardrobe, to flirt with all the reformist young men who suddenly appear at this exciting new court, which gives up Latin in a hurry, and reads the Bible in English and has to pray only twice a day.

“I can’t wait,” I wail. “I have been waiting every day since Father named Jane as queen. All I ever do is wait for something to happen to me, and hope that this time it’s nice. Janey Seymour says—”