“You won’t have to!” he assures me. “This is just for a short stay. I don’t doubt that she will forgive you, and you will return to court.”

He makes a gesture again, ushering me into the room, and I go in. I have a horror of him touching me. I hate to be pushed about, or lifted up. Nobody must ever think that they can just pick me up and place me where they want me to be without my consent. I go to the little window and pull up a stool so that I can stand high enough to look out over the parkland. It is beautiful, like Bradgate, like my home. Dear God, it feels like years and years since Jane and Katherine and I were children at our home.

* * *

I can see the sunset in the little square panes of my high window. It is a beautiful evening, the sun going down and the moon rising. I wish on the moon, as I have done since I was a little girl and my sister Jane told me that it was pagan nonsense and I should pray for my desires and not throw away my thoughts on vain wishing. The evening star sits like a little diamond on the horizon and I wish for my freedom on the star, too, and for Thomas on every star in the sky.

The tap and then the noise of the opening door behind me makes me turn. It is poor Sir William looking weary and troubled. “I just came to make sure that you had everything that you need.”

I nod my head without answering. It was a mean dinner, and he knows it. One of royal blood should be served with twenty courses. I ate tonight like a poor woman.

“I shall write to the queen and ask her to release me,” I say. “Will you take my letter and see that it gets to her?”

“I will,” he says. “And I will add a petition of my own. She must show mercy to you, and to your sister, and to your cousin Lady Margaret. And Lady Margaret’s younger son.”

I am alarmed for the little boy. “You can’t mean Charles Stuart? He cannot have been arrested? He’s only a child.”

His face is unhappy as he nods. “He’s being held in a private house in the North.”

“He’s only ten years old!” I exclaim. “His mother is in the Tower of London, his father and brother in Scotland—why would the queen not leave him at his home among his servants and friends? He’s not strong, and he is all alone in the world. He is no threat to anyone. He must be lonely and frightened as it is, all on his own at home. Why put him in a strange house and declare him a prisoner?”