I stand like a fool looking after him. He will save me: that must comfort me. He has ridden out to save me. We have suffered a great reverse but my father has gone to make it right again. I must wait here and he will come back and tell me what I must do now. Whatever we were doing here—and now it seems to me like a dream when you wake and almost laugh, and take the nightmare to God in prayer for it was so strange and wild—whatever we were doing here, it is over. Or at any rate, I suppose it is over. Unless it is a temporary reverse and we will be restored.

My father will save me as he has promised to do. John Dudley will have a plan. I had better get back to my rooms and make sure that no one else leaves. We don’t want to look disorderly. We don’t want to be Laodiceans, a people condemned for indifference as neither hot nor cold; we don’t want to shame Our Lord in the sight of His enemies. I had better look as if I am as sure of my father on earth as I am of my Father in heaven.

* * *

I begin to think that it is as if they made me queen for a day like a Lord of Misrule, a fool in a paper crown, while I really thought that I was the true queen, and my tinsel scepter was heavy and my duties great. I begin to think that I have been capering. I am afraid that people have been laughing at me.

I will die of embarrassment if this is the case, I can bear to be anything but ridiculous, and so I must stay in my rooms and order my ladies to stay with me, and Guildford’s court to stay with him. The cloth of estate was thrown down by my own father and I don’t tell anyone to put it up again. The throne is taken away without a word being spoken, the great seal of office is missing somewhere, the keys of the Tower are gone from the hook, and my rooms are empty.