Bess St. Loe takes my hand. “I loved your mother very much,” she says to me. “I will miss her. She was a great lady. You can call on me as your friend, Katherine. I will never be able to take her place, but I will love you for her.” For a moment, seeing her emotion, I could almost cry for the loss of a mother; but if you are a Tudor, you don’t really have parents. Your mother is your patron, your child is your heir, you fear the failure of them both. I don’t need Aunt Bess to tell me that my mother was a great lady, and nobody could say that she was a good mother; but it is consoling to see that the court finally recognizes her royalty and thus ours.

But there is more.

Elizabeth chooses this moment to restore our title as princesses of the blood. In death, my mother has achieved the ambition of her life: to have us recognized by Elizabeth, named as her cousins, defined as royal, titled as “Princess,” and so the first of all the possible heirs. My mother, God forgive her, would have thought it cheaply bought by her death, well worth the sacrifice. Jane died for claiming our mother’s rights; now they are given to us, her sisters, at her mother’s funeral.

Mary and I are immensely dignified mourners, our heads held as stiffly as if we are wearing coronets already. I glance behind to make sure that she is upholding our new honors, and I give her a little smile. Her head is up, her shoulders straight, she looks like a miniature queen. We retire after the ceremony to the Charterhouse at Sheen, and I burn with impatience to get back to court to see if at last Elizabeth pays me true cousinly respect, grants me my proper place in the privy chamber, and precedence among the ladies. I should follow her, one pace behind her for the rest of her life, and at her death I should step up to the throne. Now, at last, I can speak to her as a cousin about my marriage.

“I shall marry as soon as I am out of mourning,” I exult to Mr. Stokes, my stepfather. “We should ask for permission now, while the court is still in black and Elizabeth is in such a generous mood.”

He looks exhausted. He is genuinely grieved at the loss of his wife. Unlike us, her two surviving children, he truly loved her. “I am sorry,” he says stiffly. “I spoke to Lord Hertford after the funeral. It must be he who speaks to the queen, now that your mother has gone.”