Against all the odds, against the royal malice, we are happy. Ned’s mother sends him his rents and fees from his lands and interests, and so he is a wealthy prisoner. He bribes the guards and orders whatever we want. He comes to my rooms every evening and we dine together, play with our baby, and make love. The daytime becomes a time of waiting, when I study, care for our child, and write letters to my friends at court. Sir Edward, the lieutenant of the Tower, allows me to walk in his garden and I take the baby with me and put him down on a shawl on the sun-warmed grass so that he can kick his feet and watch the seagulls circling in the blue sky above him.

The night is when my real life begins, when the guard quietly admits Ned to my room, and we talk and read together. He watches me feed our son, swaddle him on his board, and hand him to the maid for the night, and then we dine well on delicacies that his mother has sent from Hanworth and treats delivered to the Tower for free, gifts from the people of London.

Every day Ned or I have a note or a letter from someone promising their support if we appeal against our sentence. Some of them promise that if we escape we shall find a haven. One or two even offer to raise an army and free us. All of them we burn at once, and never even speak of them. Elizabeth has ruled that we are sinners: she must not invent any worse crime to pin on us. We will not give her any excuse for a trial for treason.

But in any case, she is not attending to us this summer. Perhaps she thinks she has done all she can to ruin us and has turned her attention to other quarrels. She has arrested her dearest friend and lady-in-waiting Kat Ashley for recommending the suit of Prince Erik of Sweden. Elizabeth is more offended now by Kat recommending marriage than she was when Kat warned her that she was seen as a whore. Who can predict what will alert Elizabeth’s fears? Nobody knows what she will do next. She has become so frightened and so cruel that she has imprisoned her own beloved governess, the woman whom she says was like a mother to her.

“On what charge?” I demand of Ned.

“No charge,” he replies. “There is no charge. Elizabeth does not live within her own law. Kat Ashley is arrested on a whim. God knows what will become of her. Perhaps Elizabeth will name her crime, or perhaps she will be held for a few days and then released and restored to favor. Maybe Elizabeth will order our release in the same letter.”