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

I keep watch from the window, like a bereft child, but I never see my father again, though I see more men from my short-lived council coming in under arrest. Then, as the days go on, I see them, one by one, going out again. They are all released. Of course the queen is merciful. Why should she not be? She has defeated this ill-considered rebellion and won by public acclaim what she could never, as a heretic, deserve. She should thank her enemies rather than punish them, for they united the country for her. She makes them all pay huge fines—each one of them will pay her a fortune.

I think, wryly, that she has little choice but mercy—if she executed every one of her Privy Council that bent his knee to me, she would have no Privy Council at all. Every nobleman in England called for me to be queen; she has no choice but to release them. Instead of beheading them, she will raise funds, just as her father and grandfather used to do: fine them and swear them to her service with terrible penalties on their estates.

“Your father has been released,” my lady-in-waiting remarks to me after morning prayers.

“What? How do you know?”

“He left in the night, the Partridges’ little maid told me.”

“He has escaped?” I stammer. I cannot understand what has happened.

“No. He was released. But he chose to go out quietly before the gates opened at dawn. The little girl thought you would want to know that he is safe. She is of the reformed religion like you. She was proud to take him his ale from the alehouse and his dinner from the pie shop. She thought it was an honor to serve a man that risked his life for the reformed faith.”