“Now he is worse. His doctors say that he will not survive the summer.”

“The summer?” This is impossibly soon. I thought that he might live long enough to marry and have a child. I had no idea that they were saying that we might lose him within the year. “God save His Grace,” I whisper, shocked. “I did not know. But how can it be? I thought he was only—”

“That’s not important,” she cuts me off. “What matters most is his will.”

Actually, what matters most is his eternal soul. But I cannot tell her that now.

“He has changed it,” she says. There is a ring of triumph in her voice. “Changed it, and all of the council have sworn to the changes.” She glances up at Guildford as he smiles down at her. “Your father has seen to it,” she says. “He is prepared for everything.” She turns back to me. “The king has excluded his half sisters from the succession,” she says briskly, ignoring my gasp of surprise.

I get to my feet, as if I must stand to find the courage to argue with her. “That cannot be,” I say slowly. I know that Princess Mary is the next in line; whatever I may think of her religion there is no denying her right. Heirs cannot be named at random. The throne is not to be given away. My cousin the king knows this, the country knows this. Whatever my father says it cannot be that the king could choose his heir. There is no Tudor boy. He cannot prefer one cousin over another.

“It will be,” Lady Dudley says. “And she will know it for a fact when he dies.”

I am suddenly afraid that this is treason. Surely, it is treason to speak of the death of the king; surely, it is treason to speak against the princesses?

“I think I had better go home,” I say.

“You’ll stay here,” she raps out. “This is no time for you to run to your mother.”

Scornfully, I look at her son, who clearly never has to run to his mother for he is always under her wing.

“You have to be here so that my husband can fetch you to the Tower,” she explains.

I gasp. The last man fetched to the Tower by her husband ended with his head on the block: Edward Seymour.

“No, you fool,” she says irritably. “You will have to go to the Tower on the death of the king. You will have to be seen at the Tower. My husband will want to keep you safe.”

It is simply too incredible, and too ridiculous for me to consider. I know that my father and my mother will never allow me to be taken to the Tower by John Dudley.