“I stole it,” she says frankly, winding it up and setting it before Teddy, who pays no attention at all.

“Mary!”

“I don’t consider her to be the owner of the royal treasures,” she says bluntly. “They’re more yours than hers. If you are to be overlooked as the heir for having a child out of wedlock, why should I serve a queen that everyone knows is a Dudley whore? Born of the Boleyn whore?”

At once, I glance to the door, but there is no waiting spy today.

“Exactly, nobody has come with me but Thomas Keyes, the sergeant porter, who was good enough to walk with me. He’s waiting downstairs.”

“He’s not listening?” I ask nervously.

“He does not spy on me. He is a true friend,” she says. She climbs up into one of the tatty chairs and shakes her head. “It’s all changed again. There’s no spy on me. They don’t care what you say anymore. They accept that you acted in love and there is no plot to discover. They’ve given up questioning and they have released all the prisoners but you and Ned.”

I am so pleased, I clasp my hands together. “They accept my marriage? We are to be released?”

“No, I think the plan is to deny it, and shame you.”

The disappointment is no surprise. I think I had known this was coming when they changed the questioning last year. But with a son in my arms and my husband under the same roof, I hardly care what people say about me. I know the truth, and I know what Ned is to me and I to him, and God knows. Who cares what Elizabeth says? As soon as we are free we can remarry and who will care then?

“Will they deny our marriage and then will she let us go?”

Neither of us needs to say who “she” is. Elizabeth has become a monster in my mind. One Tudor queen took my sister; the other will take my good name.

Mary makes a little gesture with her hand that says maybe yes, maybe no. “She’d do anything to keep you locked up, but she’s running out of reasons. They reported the interrogations of the Seymours and of Aunt Bess, and of you and Ned, to the Privy Council, and it was obvious that the two of you married secretly for love. They looked for the minister who married you but couldn’t find him. I don’t think they looked very hard. But anyway, you had exchanged vows and you have a ring. It’s a private marriage. Elizabeth’s mother had little more. The Privy Council have waited for days for her to invent some crime, or make up a law that she can claim that you have broken, but she says nothing.”

“Why doesn’t she speak?”