I don’t ask him if they expect me to return soon. I think it better not to know. Perhaps I will be able to spin out a visit to our London house till the summer, and then if the king goes on progress, John Dudley and his sons may attend without their wives, and I may be able to go to Bradgate. The thought that I might get there, to ride in the woods and to see the harvest come in, to walk under a strawberry moon and take a boat out on the lake, is the only thing that keeps me at peace through the first days of my marriage. That, and my books, of course. I can always open a book and hide myself in that inner, private world.

The idea that I would want to go to Bradgate, that I would seek my mother as a refuge from a home even less kindly than hers, makes me understand for the first time what God said to Eve: I will increase thy sorrow, when thou art with child: with pain shalt thou bear thy children, and thy lust shall pertain unto your husband, and he shall rule thee. Truly, it is a sorrow to be a woman; and Eve shows us that to be a wife is even worse.

It is agreed between Lady Dudley and my mother that I can live with my parents at Suffolk Place, as long as I visit the Dudleys regularly and dine with them often. The first weeks of my marriage are spent like this. But Lady Dudley breaks this arrangement by coming into the privy chamber before dinner, as Guildford and I are sitting in awkward silence, and saying: “Now you must send for your clothes and all your things, Jane. You are to stay tonight and you must stay after. You will live here now.”

I rise and curtsey to her. “I thought I was to go home,” I say. “My mother is expecting me home tonight.”

She shakes her head. “It is all to be changed. My lord has written to me that you must be here. You have to stay here with us. We have to be ready.”

Guildford, on his feet at the first sight of his mother, kneels to her, and she rests her hand in blessing on his curly head. “We have to be ready? He’s worse?” he asks eagerly.

I look from the woman to her kneeling son. “Who’s worse?”

She gives an irritated little tut at my ignorance. “Leave us,” she says to the ladies who have come in with her. “Sit down, Jane. Guildford, sweet son, you come here to me.”

He stands behind her, like Mr. Nozzle clinging to Katherine, watching my face as his mother tells me: “The king, God bless him, is worse. You knew at least that he was ill?”

“Of course I knew that. I often sit with him.”