Later, a long time later, they told me that I collapsed at the words, that I went white and they thought that I would never open my eyes. I did not speak and they thought that the news had killed me. When I did wake in my bed, I asked if it was true and when they told me, “Yes, yes, Thomas Keyes is dead,” I closed my eyes again and turned my back on the room. Facing the wall, I waited for death to come to me. It seemed to me then that I had lost everyone that I had ever loved, and everyone who belonged to me, that my life was pointless, a waste of time, that it served only to anger the queen more, that she has become a monster, the Moldwarp like her father, a great beast that lives in the bowels of England and devours her brightest children.

That Elizabeth’s malice should have broken the heart of the greatest man in England, that great man with that great spirit, does not prove her power but it shows the strength of evil when a woman thinks of nothing but herself. Elizabeth is empowered by her vanity. Anyone who suggests to her that another woman is preferable must die. Any man that prefers another woman to her must be exiled. Even someone like Thomas, who loyally served her and whose preference fell on a little woman who came no higher than his broad leather belt, even Thomas could not be suffered to live happily once he looked away from Elizabeth to someone else—to me.

They move me to Osterley Park, Sir Thomas Gresham’s country house, as if they are moving a corpse. They think that I will die on my own in the country and that all the inconvenience will be over. And this is my silent wish. It must be God’s will and I am not going to blaspheme Him by killing myself; but I don’t eat and I don’t speak. I lie with my eyes closed and the pillow beneath my head is always damp as the tears constantly seep from under my closed eyelids as I cry for my husband, Thomas, whether I am awake or asleep.

The days get shorter and my bedroom is dark as night from three in the afternoon, and then slowly, slowly the golden light starts to come back to the white walls and I can hear birdsong outside the window in the morning and the skies lighten earlier and earlier and I think that my husband, my beloved husband, would never advise me to give up. He loved me when I was a little girl on too big a horse. He loved my courage; he loved my unbeatable spirit. Perhaps I can find that courage and that spirit once again, for love of him.