I am puzzled by this new questioning. I wonder if they have decided to try to disprove my marriage, since they cannot prove a conspiracy. But what good would it do them to shame me? And who would ever believe such a thing of a young man so prickly about his honor as Ned? Who would believe that a young woman, sister of the sainted Jane, would not be married by a Protestant preacher?

Then, suddenly, as I look out over the river and the wheeling gulls, there is a sensation as if my bowels have turned over, a sensation so strong that I think I am about to die. I cling to a chair back and gasp out in pain. The agony is too much even for me to scream. My lady darts forward and then jumps back as there is a cascade of red water on the stone floor. Mr. Nozzle leaps for a tapestry and swarms up it, the puppies dash into their box and whimper. Ribbon the cat sniffs at it and walks away, shaking a paw.

“My God, the baby is coming!” my lady says. “Your waters have broken and you are not even in confinement!”

The pain goes as suddenly as it came, and I could almost laugh at the thought that being locked in the Tower is not adequate confinement. Of course, I should be in a darkened room with two midwives with me, two ladies to serve me, a couple of maids, a wet nurse and rockers waiting to take the baby, a husband pacing between chapel and his dinner. Of course everything is wrong. But nothing is going to stop this baby coming.

“Tell the lieutenant of the Tower to send for the midwife, and see that someone tells the Earl of Hertford,” I say. I want to cry for sheer terror that I have to face this ordeal without my mother or my sister or any kindly loving woman. “Tell him to pray for me and our child.”

She hammers on the door and it takes forever before we hear the slow steps of the guard mounting the stairs. “Let me out! I have to see Sir Edward!” she screams to his murmured query through the thick door. “The baby is coming!”

I manage to get to the corner where there is a plain crucifix on the wall and the open Bible before it. I manage to kneel and pray. I manage to wait as the pain comes again, and pray for the safety of the baby and myself, and I pray that the midwife comes soon, for God knows we need one person who knows what she is doing here.

As the midwife bangs the outer door and rushes up the stairs, I hear above me my husband, my true love Ned, hammer on his locked door. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” I can hear him bellow, even through the thick wood of my own door.