It gets colder and there is no more boating on the river for pleasure. The court is to return to London. Amy Dudley’s death is named as an accident. Robert Dudley, his month of mourning concluded, his name as clear as it will ever be, is allowed back to court. Elizabeth, with the eyes of the world on her and on her lover, knowing that everyone believes him to be a murderer, greets him very quietly, and Robert Dudley joins the court with uncharacteristic gravity.

They have to be together, they cannot help themselves; everyone can see that. But there will be no talk of marriage ever again: William Cecil has seen to that. It was he who spread the rumors that Dudley would kill his wife, and it was he who told everyone that the country would never bear a Dudley as king. It doesn’t really matter if either of these things is true or false: the whole of Christendom believes it, and Elizabeth and Dudley stoop under the shared burden of their shame.

My cousin Margaret Douglas, the poor woman—ugly, old, and papist—is summoned to court during this gloomy time. She is not here to be honored, but to be watched. Elizabeth, despairing of getting any truth from the long interrogations of Margaret’s crazed advisors—a double spy, a soothsayer, a turncoat priest—has decided to keep a close eye on her at court. They know that Margaret has approached the French Queen of Scots, but they don’t know what she has offered.

At once, all the issues of precedence begin all over again as the woman, a known papist, who should really be humbled by her disgrace, tries to push in front of me, the Protestant heir. I am so unhappy at the loss of Ned I really can’t make myself care enough to push back. It is a relief when Margaret is allowed to return to her home in Yorkshire, still suspected, still papist, still old and ugly of course.

I decide that I will write to Ned and tell him that when the court returns to London and falls into the routine of city life, I don’t wish to see him. I know this is meaningless: we cannot help but see each other, we are attending the same queen, we are serving at the same court. We will see each other every day.

“But I don’t wish to dance with you, or have you lift me to my horse, or attend me to chapel, or single me out in any way at all,” I write stiffly. I drop a tear on the page and I blot it with my sleeve so that he cannot see that I am crying over this. “I wish you every happiness with Frances. I myself will never marry. I have been deeply disappointed in love.”