“Exactly,” Mary says. “So that’s what that evil Tudor witch is going to do next.” She leans over the cradle, as if she would be a good fairy against the evil fairy of the story. “She’s going to try to make out that this innocent boy is a bastard and unfit to inherit. It’s the only way she can deny that he is her heir—declare him a bastard. That from her, who is a bastard known.”

* * *

Mary is quite right. In February when the ice is white on the inside of the window every morning and it is dark for twelve hours every day, Sir Edward taps on the door of my room and comes in with a bow.

“Your ladyship,” he says, by way of avoiding my maiden or my married name.

“Sir Edward?”

“I have come to tell you that you are bidden to Lambeth Palace tomorrow to be questioned by the archbishop himself.”

“What is he going to ask me?”

Sir Edward looks embarrassed. “About the pretended marriage,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know of any pretended marriage,” I say frostily.

He gestures to the paper in his hand. I see the royal seal and Elizabeth’s own looping signature. “It is called a pretended marriage here,” he says.

I smile at him, inviting him to see the bitter joke. “It sounds like a very fair inquiry, doesn’t it?” I say.

He bows his head. “Your husband is to go, too,” he says quietly. “But you are to travel in separate boats and not see each other.”

“Tell him that I love him,” I say. “And tell him that I will never deny him, our love or our son.”

“You say your love?” he prompts me.

“My love and our marriage,” I say wearily. “No one will ever trick me into denying the truth.”

* * *

Matthew Parker—now honored with the archbishopric of Canterbury as his reward for being one of the few churchmen who could bring themselves to support Elizabeth—was among those who put my sister Jane on the throne, but I don’t expect him to favor me and defy the queen now. He married his wife the very moment that clergymen were released from their vows of celibacy, but I don’t expect him to defend my marriage either. He was appointed by Elizabeth and he will never defy her. I won’t find justice in the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth, any more than in the Privy Council.

But the people of London are on my side. As my barge rushes out of the watergate with a swirl of dark river water and starts to beat upstream, I can see people pausing on the banks, peering towards the barge, and then, faintly, I can hear them shouting over the cold gray water.