“Why would she be furious?” Ned asks me. “All we have done is marry without her permission. That’s not illegal since Queen Mary repealed the law. There can be no doubt that she would have given permission if we had asked her. She had no grounds for refusal, and she has no reason for displeasure. People will blame us for being in a hurry, but nobody can blame us for honorable love. Our parents agreed! There can be no objection.”

I find my courage. “We’ll tell her,” I agree. There is a little silence. “When will we tell her?”

“We’ll have to choose our moment,” Ned says. “Let’s not say anything till the end of Lent. Perhaps at the Easter feasting when the court is merry again. There will be some music and dancing—there’ll be a masque—she loves a masque and dancing. We’ll tell her when she’s enjoying herself.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Janey says. She gives a little cough. “At Eastertide.”

If I had not been so absorbed in watching to see what Ned truly thought of my news, trying to look past his well-acted joy to whether he is afraid as I am afraid, I would have seen that Janey is paler than ever. She coughs in her sleeve and there is a little spatter of red blood.

“Janey!” I say in dismay.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “A blister on my lip.”

Next day she takes to her bed, and now Ned and I meet in her room without pretense. Every day after chapel we come to see how she is, and now for the first time I see she is very ill, and that her flushes and high spirits have been those of a girl beside herself with fever.

The physicians say that she will get better with the good weather, but I don’t see why they are so hopeful as the sun rises earlier every day, and the birds start to sing outside her window, but Janey gets no better. One morning I go to her room straight after chapel, but the door is closed and Janey’s lady-in-waiting is sitting outside, her eyes red from crying.

“Is she sleeping?” I ask. “What’s the matter?”

Mrs. Thrift shakes her head, her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my lady!”

“Janey! Is she sleeping?”

She swallowed. “No, my lady. She’s gone. In the night. I have sent for the physicians and her brother, and he will have to tell the queen.”

I don’t understand. I won’t understand. “What d’you mean?”

“She’s gone, my lady. She’s died.”

I take hold of the cold stone frame of the door. “But she can’t have died. I saw her just after dinner last night, I left her when she was going to sleep. She was feverish; she is always feverish, but not dying.”

The woman shakes her head. “Alas, poor lady.”