Now he brings a new plan from Philip of Spain. If these present negotiations to return me to my throne break down again, then there is to be an uprising by all the English lords—not just those of the North. Ridolfi calculates that more than thirty peers are secret Papists—and who should know better than he who has the ear of the Pope? The Pope must have told him how many of Elizabeth’s court are secretly loyal to the old faith. Her situation is worse than I realized if more than thirty of her lords have secret priests hiding in their houses and take Mass! Ridolfi says they only need the word to rise, and King Philip has promised to provide an army and the money to pay them. We could take England within days. This is “the Great Enterprise of England” remade afresh, and though my betrothed does not like the man, he cannot help but be tempted by the plan.

“The Great Enterprise of England,” it makes me want to dance, just to hear it. What could be greater as an enterprise? What could be a more likely target than England? With the Pope and Philip of Spain, with the lords already on my side, we cannot fail. “The Great Enterprise,” “the Great Enterprise,” it has a ring to it which will peal down the centuries. In years to come men will know that it was this that set them free from the heresy of Lutheranism and the rule of a bastard usurper.

But we must move quickly. The same letter from Norfolk tells me the mortifying news that my family, my own family in France, have offered Elizabeth an alliance and a new suitor for her hand. They do not even insist on my release before her wedding. This is to betray me; I am betrayed by my own kin who should protect me. They have offered her Henri d’Anjou, which should be a joke, given that he is a malformed schoolboy and she an old lady, but for some reason, nobody is laughing and everyone is taking it seriously.

Her advisors are all so afraid of Elizabeth dying, and me inheriting, that they would rather marry her to a child and have her die in childbirth, old as she is, old enough to be a grandmother—as long as she leaves them with a Protestant son and heir.

I have to think that this is a cruel joke from my family on Elizabeth’s vanity and lust, but if they are sincere, and if she will go through with it, then they will have a French king on the throne of England, and I will be disinherited by their child. They will have left me in prison to rot and put a rival to me and mine on the English throne.