“I married a nobleman for true love. I insist that I see my husband. You must at least tell him that I am here, on the floor below him, and that I am near my time.”

There is a tap on the door. Of course, my heart leaps as if it could be Ned: suddenly freed and coming to save me. Sir Edward looks at me suspiciously.

“You are expecting a message?” he asks.

“I am expecting nothing. I am hoping for mercy.”

He nods to the guard who stands by the door and he unbolts it and swings it open. It is one of the lieutenant’s servants. “What d’you want, Jeffrey?” he asks abruptly.

The man bows. He is holding a posy of late roses, red roses. “These for the young lady,” he says. “From the Earl of Hertford.”

They are a deep red, Lancaster red. Nobody at the Tudor court would ever offer a white rose. I put out my hand and Sir Edward fussily shakes them in case a note drops out. Then he takes the posy apart looking for a message, and asks me what red roses mean to me; if they are a signal. I say that they mean that Ned is thinking of me, imprisoned just one floor below him. We are under the same roof again, as we have not been for months. He knows now that I was with child when he left me, and how I have suffered in his absence. He is telling me that he loves me. “That’s all,” I say. “He is a poet. Flowers are like words to him. Red roses tell me that he loves me still. Red roses are for true love.”

Sir Edward, for all that he is Elizabeth’s jailer and spy, cannot hide that he is moved. “Well, you can keep them,” he says, finally handing them over.

“Thank you,” I say. I hold them to my lips. “These are the most precious flowers I have ever had in my life. Will you tell him how glad I am to have them from him, and how happy I am that we are together again, even if it is here in prison, where both our fathers were once imprisoned? Will you tell him that I love him still and that I don’t regret—that I will never regret—that he loved me and married me? Tell him that I pray every day that we will be together again as husband and wife, as we planned to be.”

He shakes his head. “I’ll tell him that you like the flowers,” he says. “I can’t remember the rest.”

“You could write it down,” I say, laughing at us both. “You write down everything else I ever say or do. Why not this?”