“She knows what she is doing,” I agree. “She has cured herself of her fear of us. You will never have a son, she’s sure of that. And now nobody will support my son, named as a bastard to an unchaste mother.”

“Oh, she’s won,” Mary says dismissively. “We weren’t even conspiring against her and she has worked against us as if we were the vilest of enemies. Margaret Douglas was nothing but fanciful talk and ambition for her son, but she is named as a traitor, too. She’s not much of a kinswoman, our queen. There’s little joy in being close to her. D’you think she will free you, now she has ruined you?”

I get up and go to the window.

“What are you doing?” she asks as I swing open the casement.

“I am hanging out a black ribbon,” I say quietly. “For bad news. Because nobody is going to call for my release now.”

* * *

The court leaves London and I think of Mary sitting on her swing as an angel of peace, and dancing for Elizabeth in the masque, which tells Mary Queen of Scots that she—a papist, a Frenchwoman—is to be Elizabeth’s heir and that we are to be forgotten. I think it is hard for me, here in the Tower with the man I love imprisoned a hundred yards from my window; but it is perhaps even harder for my sister Mary, in smiling service to a woman that she knows is my enemy, her enemy, the vindictive enemy of every woman that she sees as a rival.

The weather grows warmer and I open my windows at night and hear the blackbirds in the orchards singing sweetly later and later every evening, as they court and build their nests. I put bells around Ribbon’s neck so that she cannot hunt the nestlings, and I put my crumbled breakfast bread on the windowsill every morning and watch for the robin that swoops in and struts before the pane of glass, showing his red breast and claiming his place.

In the evening I study, reading the books that Jane left behind here in the lieutenant’s library, studying the Bible that she sent to me, rereading her letter to me, to her friends and teachers, seeing her as both my sister and a heroine. I am trying to find her courage, her sense of destiny, in myself. She always knew that her feet were on a holy road, whether they led her to the throne or the scaffold; she always knew that she was walking towards God. I am afraid she must have found me very light and foolish. I know better now, and I wish I could tell her that I know better now.