It is the first time that I have had a sense of him as a young man, not yet twenty, who has to obey his family, as I have to obey mine. It is the first time that I have seen he is anxious about what is planned for us. It is the first time that I have thought: we are in the same situation, together. Our future will be together, we will grow up together, we have to face whatever is going to happen together. I give him a shy little smile. “We just have to wait?”

Surprisingly, he touches my fingers with his, as if he shares my sense of being caged, like the bear at Bradgate, waiting for the dogs to come. “We have to wait,” he agrees.

* * *

It is Mary Sidney, Guildford’s older sister, who comes one afternoon, cloaked and hooded as if she were a heroine of one of the poems that she loves so much, her dark blue eyes bright with excitement, her slim frame trembling.

“You have to come!” she says, whispering though we are alone in my private chamber, except for my ladies, seated in the window, catching the last light of the setting sun on the books they are reading.

“Did your father send you for me?”

“Yes!” she says excitedly. “You are to come at once.”

“I am not well,” I tell her. “I am sick all the time, as if I am being poisoned.”

“Of course you’re not being poisoned. You have to come now.”

I hesitate. “My things, my books...”

“Come, it’s just for a visit. You won’t need anything. Come now.”

“As I am? Without anything?”

“Yes! Yes!”

My ladies bring my cloak and my hat. There is no time to change my gown. I take a fur to wrap around me on the barge for the wind is cold on the darkening water.

“Come on!” Mary Sidney says. “Hurry up.”

The Dudley barge is waiting for us, but the ducal pennants and the standard are furled and tied. We go on board without a word and they cast off in silence and start to row, swiftly and smoothly. At once, I think that they have made a mistake and are going the wrong way—upriver, away from the city, westward. I cannot understand this. If my poor cousin is worse, we should be going to him at Greenwich Palace, downriver. But the flowing inward tide is with us and the boat springs forward with each splash of the oars in the water, so that Mary and I, sitting side by side on the seat under the awning, rock forward and back with every movement. I put my hand to my belly where I feel a grip of fear or nausea, or both.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Syon House,” she says.