“Come in,” my lady grandmother says, conscious of the waiting servants and the people loitering in the street. She leads us into the great hall inside the house and then turns aside to the porter’s room for privacy. There is a table and a chair, and a writing stand for messages and accounts. I lean against the table, suddenly exhausted.

“My dear, sit down,” she says kindly to me. “Sir William. Will you take a glass of ale? Of wine?”

I cannot bear to sit. I feel if I sit, they will slam the door and never let me out again. I stand awkwardly, my back aching from the two-day ride, filled with a painful sense of dread. “Am I not free?” I can hardly speak, my lips feel swollen and stiff as if someone has slapped me hard in the face. “I thought I was free.”

She shakes her head. “You are in my keeping, like your poor little nephew is in the keeping of his grandmother at Hanworth. But the queen is not releasing you. I have had to promise to keep you confined.”

“I can’t” bursts from me. I can feel the tears coming and I give a shuddering sob. “Lady Grandmother, I can’t be confined. I have to be able to go outside. I can’t bear being kept in a little room like a doll in a box. I can’t bear it, Lady Grandmother. I will die. I swear I will die if I cannot ride out and walk out and go freely.”

She nods, her face pale. She glances at Sir William and says: “You kept her very close?”

He shrugs angrily. “What could I do? I was ordered to let her walk in the garden only as much as her health required. But I let her go out all day, every day, as much as I could. They ordered that she should have one room, a small room, and one maid, and no messages or visits or friends. She was not even supposed to speak to my servants. I was not supposed to speak to her at all.”

My lady grandmother turns to me. “Don’t cry, Mary,” she says firmly. “We’ll do what we can. And at least you are in my keeping and can live with me and my children: Susan and Peregrine. And we can talk freely and study and write and think.”

“I have to be free,” I whisper. “I have to be free.”

My stepgrandmother looks at Sir William. “I was leaving just now for Greenwich,” she repeats. “Lady Mary may come with me. Does a train of wagons with her goods follow you? Or will you send everything directly to Greenwich?”

“She has next to nothing,” Sir William blurts out. “She came to me with almost nothing. A few bits of tapestry, a pillow or two.”