“I know,” Mary says. “I’ll tell William Cecil that you should be released to Hanworth. You should have your Seymour baby there, in Ned’s family home, and he should be christened in his own chapel.”

THE TOWER, LONDON,

AUTUMN 1561

It is hot and airless in the lieutenant’s small house, and I am not allowed out of my rooms, not to walk in the garden nor on the flat roof of the Tower where I could, at least, get a breath of air in the evening and see the sun set.

Every day the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Warner, comes to my room and asks me who knew that Ned and I were in love, and who knew that we were married, who witnessed the betrothal and the marriage, and who encouraged us to do it and keep it secret.

He asks the same questions over and over again while Mr. Nozzle paws at the stone walls and tears miserably at the frayed edge of the tapestry, swinging dolefully on the dangling hem as if it were a bell rope and he were tolling a mourning bell.

Over and over again I tell Sir Edward that we were two young people in love, the witness was Janey, that no one else knew except perhaps the servants and, of course, the minister, and he writes it all down very carefully and says that the minister will be sought out and that I must hope that his story confirms mine. I say that my box of papers, which proves everything I say, is in the royal jewel house, and they will find it if they will but look for it. I say that I already told all this to Robert Dudley, and the lieutenant says that this has been noted. He asks what I told Bess St. Loe, and I stammer, remembering the dark that followed the sudden blowing out of the candle.

“Bess St. Loe?” I repeat, feebly.

“She has been arrested for questioning,” he says heavily. “Indeed, I have interrogated her myself for her part in this conspiracy.”

“Good God, is she in here too?”

He nods. “Under suspicion of treasonous conspiracy with you.”

“Sir Edward! That is so wrong! All I did was tell her that I was with child and beg her to help me for she had been a friend of my mother! God knows, there was no conspiracy. She cried out that I should never have come to her and ordered me from her room. She would not even speak to me in my trouble.”

He writes this down, very slowly, word for word. I have to bite my lip on my impatience. “Sir Edward, I do promise you, this is just a story about love and perhaps folly, but when I see Ned—”

“The Earl of Hertford is on his way from France,” he tells me.