“I will keep him if I may?” I turn to her.

“You girls!” she says, as if Jane and Katherine and I are still children together, begging for unsuitable pets.

“Please!” I say, and I hear Katherine’s voice in mine. “Please, he will be no trouble, I promise.” I remember a sunny day in Jane’s bedroom and Katherine refusing to put him out of the door, and lying about his lice.

“Well, keep him,” she says indulgently. “But he is not to tear things, or make a mess in my rooms.”

“I will keep him clean and tidy,” I promise her. I can feel him take tight hold of my thumb in his little hand, as if we are shaking on an agreement. “She did love him so very much.”

“She had a loving heart,” Sir Owen remarks. “She had a very loving heart.”

Someone has trimmed his little jacket with black ribbon so he is in mourning for the young woman who loved him. His sorrowful eyes look at me, and I tuck him into the crook of my arm.

“What of her cat and dog?”

His downcast face droops farther. “The cat is old now, and lives in our stable yard. They’re not loyal, you know. I didn’t think to catch him and bring him.”

“No,” my stepgrandmother says hastily. “Indeed no. We don’t need another cat.”

“And the little pug, Jo...” he hesitates.

“You’ve never brought her, too?”

“Alas, I couldn’t,” he says.

“Why?” I ask, but I think I know.

“She was at the bed all through Lady Katherine’s last days. She never left her side, she never ate. It was a little miracle. Her ladyship said that she should have her meat put down on the floor of her bedchamber. She noticed her little dog; she did not forget her, even while she was preparing herself for God.”

“Go on,” I say.

“She slept on the foot of her bed, and when her ladyship closed her eyes with her own hand, she made a little noise, like a whimper, and laid her head down on her ladyship’s feet.”

My stepgrandmother clears her throat, as if she cannot bear this mawkish scene.

“Truly?” I ask.

“Truly,” Sir Owen says. “We had to take the body, you understand, and embalm it and seal it in lead. It was all done as a princess should be buried, you know.”

I know. Who should know better than me?

“The little dog followed the body like the first of mourners, and we were all too tender to push her away, to be honest with you. We didn’t mean any disrespect, not to the Lady Katherine, God knows. But she always let her little dog run after her everywhere, and so we let her follow, even though her mistress was gone.