My lady grandmother unties the ribbon around the papers and says: “It is an account of her last hours. God bless her, the pretty child. Shall I read it to you?”

I climb on to the window seat of her privy chamber. “Please do,” I say dully. I wonder that I don’t cry, and then I realize that I have spent my life in the shadow of the scaffold. I never expected any of us to survive Tudor rule. My lady grandmother smooths the paper on her knee and clears her throat. “It says that she prepared to die as the household begged her to fight for her life. She wasn’t alone, Mary—Lady Hopton was with her and told her that with God’s favor she would live. But she said it was not God’s will that she should live any longer, and that His will should be done and not hers.”

She glances at me, to see if I am finding this unbearable. I know that I look calm; I feel nothing but an icy despair.

“Early in the morning, just as it was getting light, she sent for Sir Owen Hopton and asked him to take some messages for her. She begged the queen to forgive her for marrying without permission, she said, Be good unto my children and not impute my fault to them.” My stepgrandmother glances up at me again. I nod for her to go on.

“She asked for the queen to be good to Lord Hertford, her husband, and said: I know this my death will be heavy news for him. She asked for him to be freed, and sent him her betrothal ring, a pointed diamond, and a wedding ring with five links.”

“I remember it,” I interrupt. “She showed it to me. She always kept it with her.”

“She has given it back to him and a mourning ring as well.” My lady stepgrandmother’s voice is choked. “Poor girl. Poor sweet lovely girl. What a tragedy! It says here that she prayed him to be—even as I have been unto him a true and faithful wife, that he will be a loving and natural father to my children. It says here that she commissioned the mourning ring with her portrait months ago—she must have known she was dying. She had it engraved for him.”

I am hunched up now, on the seat, my face to my knees, crouched like a hurt child, my hands over my eyes. I would almost put them over my ears so I cannot hear my sister’s last loving words. I feel as if I am sinking down into the deeps of loss. “What does it say?” I ask. “What does the ring say?”

“While I lived—yours.”

“Is that all?” I ask. I think I must have arrived at the very ocean bed of sorrow. It is as if the deeps have closed over my own head.