I am so astounded by this that I can say nothing. I just look at my uncle and I feel my jaw drop open. “No,” I say simply.

He is unblinking. “I am afraid so.”

“But she freed me, at everyone’s request, so that I could leave the city because of the plague!”

Neither of us needs to say who “she” is.

“No, she did not. She was persuaded by the whole of the court that you could not be left in the Tower in such danger, but she has not pardoned you, nor forgiven you, and she has certainly not freed you. You are to be kept here, by me, as much a prisoner as if you were still in the Tower in the charge of the guards. I have orders that you are to see and communicate with no one but the servants of my household and they are to prevent you from leaving.” He pauses. “Or even going outside.”

“Uncle, you cannot have agreed to this? To be my jailer?”

He looks at me helplessly. “Would it have been better to refuse, and leave you to die of the plague in the Tower?”

“You are imprisoning me? Your own niece?”

“What else can I do if she orders it? Would it be better if she put me in the Tower with you?”

“And Ned? My husband?”

“His mother has promised to keep him within two rooms of her house. He is not pardoned or forgiven either. His own mother is guarding him.”

“My son!” I say in a rush of panic. “Oh my God! Uncle! Our little boy, Teddy. I let him ride with Ned thinking they were following. Where is Teddy? Is he coming here? Are they sending him here to me?”

My uncle, pale with his own distress, shakes his head. “He’s to live with his father and grandmother at Hanworth,” he says.

“Not with me?” I whisper.

“No.”

“No!” I scream. I run to the door and wrench at the handle, but as it turns and the door does not open, I know that my own uncle’s servants have already locked me in. I hammer with both my hands on the wooden panels. “Let me out! I must have my son! I must have my son!”

I spin round and I snatch at my uncle’s arm. He fends me off, his face white.

“Uncle, you have to make them send Teddy to me,” I gabble at him. “He is not even two years old! He has never been away from me. He’s not like a royal boy who has spent his life with servants: we have never been parted! I am his only companion, I have mothered him night and day. He will die without me! I can’t be parted from him.”

“You have your baby,” he says feebly.