I pull my hood farther forward and I ride close to him. “It’s a question I ask too,” I say dryly to Sir William.

“It’s a question I may not ask,” he tells me.

THE MINORIES, LONDON,

SUMMER 1567

We clatter up to my stepgrandmother’s house at the Minories. It was actually once our house. I can remember my father telling me it was a gift to us from the young King Edward, and I remember shrinking back from the massive dark wood door and the echoing stone galleries of the former monastery. We lost it when Jane was killed, of course—when we lost everything.

My stepgrandmother, Catherine, a serene and beautiful woman of nearly fifty, is coming out of the hall, dressed in her traveling cape. She starts to see us, on our sweaty horses at her London door.

“Mary! My dear! I thought you were coming next month! I was told you would be here next month.” She beckons to one of her liveried grooms and says: “Help Lady Mary down from her horse, Thomas.”

The man helps me dismount and then my lady grandmother kneels down to kiss me warmly. “I am so glad you are released, and into my care,” she says. “Welcome, child. You look pale. It’s not surprising.”

She looks up at Sir William. “How is this? They told me you would bring her to me within the month. I am leaving now to go to Greenwich.”

Sir William heaves himself down from the saddle and bows. “The guard came to escort her without notice the day before yesterday,” he says. “Orders. But her ladyship has been desperate to be free any day this past year,” he continues. “It would have been cruelty to keep her another day. I don’t think I could have kept her another day, to be honest. She has earned her freedom, God knows.”

A shadow passes over my stepgrandmother’s face. She turns to me: “But you know you are not freed?”

“What?”

She turns to Sir William. “She’s not free,” she says again. “She is in my care. She is released into my keeping.”

Sir William swears and turns to his horse to muffle his oath. He turns back to us and he is flushed red with anger and there are tears in his eyes. “Not freed?” he repeats. “On whose orders is this—” He bites off words that might be treasonous. “I thought she was to come to you as her lady grandmother, and then to go wherever she might please. I thought you were receiving her and taking her back to court.”