So who is this new man, shuffling into prison? Which of my many self-appointed advisors is this, forced to face the wrong that he has done? I can see only the top and the back of his head but I feel certain that I know him—something about the set of his bowed shoulders, something about the dawdling feet. I cry out. Suddenly, I hammer on the thick glass of the window, hurting my palms as I slap them against the leaded panes. I scream but he cannot hear me. This broken man is the only one I can trust: “Father! Father! My father!”

* * *

I request permission for my father to be housed in my rooms. This is foolish of me: he is not a guest in the royal palace; I am no longer a queen to allocate the rooms. I am under house arrest and he is a prisoner in the cells. I realize that everything has changed: everything. Not only can he not live with me, I am not allowed even to see him. I demand to see my mother.

“She is not even in London,” the gentleman-jailer of the Tower, Mr. Partridge, says awkwardly. “I regret to tell you, Your...” he stammers over my title. “At any rate, she has gone.”

“Where is she?” I ask. “Is she at home?”

“She is not at your home,” he says. He speaks slowly, choosing his words with care. “She has gone to the queen to sue for pardon.”

I am so relieved I could almost weep. Of course! She will speak to her cousin to get a pardon for my father. God be praised! “She will send for me, and for Father. We will go home to Bradgate.”

“Indeed, I hope so.”

“Where is the queen?”

He looks shifty, as if he thinks it better that I don’t know. “She is coming,” he says. “She is on her way to London, by easy stages. Going slowly.”

“I want to see her too,” I say bravely. After all, she is my cousin. Once I was her little favorite. She knew that I was not of her faith, and yet she still offered me pretty gowns. I wish now that I had been more gracious in my opposition to her wrong thinking. But nonetheless, we are still kinswomen. I should speak to her. It would be better for me to explain to her directly. I am composing a justification, but I should perhaps apologize to her in person.

He looks at the floor, at the toes of his boots; he does not raise his eyes. “I will tell them that you request an audience with Her Majesty the Queen,” he says. “But I am told that you are not to be released.”

“Until the queen sends for me,” I say.

“Until then.” But he does not sound as confident as I did; and I was pretending.

THE TOWER, LONDON,

AUGUST 1553