“But is she a legitimate sovereign?” Mary Seton, my companion, asks me slyly, knowing that she is only repeating my old words back to me, as we rest one evening in a poor inn on the road to Tutbury.

“She is,” I say firmly. At any rate, when we are in her lands and with no power of our own, we will treat her as such.

“The child of Anne Boleyn, conceived outside wedlock when the king was married to a Catholic princess,” she reminds me. “Declared a bastard by her own father, and that law never revoked. Not even by her... as if she is afraid to ask the question. Heir to the throne only because the king named her on his deathbed, after his son, after his legitimate daughter, the desperate last words of a frightened man.”

I turn away from her to the fire and push the most recent note, a promise of help from Mary’s faithful brother, Lord Seton, to the back of the logs and watch it burn. “Whatever she is, whatever her mother was, even whatever her father—even if he was Mark Smeaton, a singer—nonetheless she is an anointed queen now,” I say firmly. “She found a bishop who could bring himself to crown her, and as such she is sacred.”

“All but one of her bishops refused. The whole church but one Judas denied her. Some of them went to prison rather than crown her. Some of them died for their faith, and died denying her. They called her a usurper, a usurper on your throne.”

“Peut-être. But she is on it now, and I will never, never be a party to overthrow an ordained queen. God has allowed her to be queen, for whatever reason. She has been anointed with sacred oil, she has the crown on her head and the orb and scepter in her hand. She is untouchable. I shall not be the one to throw her down.”

“God has made her queen but not authorized her to be a tyrant,” Mary observes quietly.

“Exactly,” I say. “So she may rule her kingdom but she may not tyrannize over me. I will be free.”

“Amen to that,” Mary says devoutly. I look at the scrap of paper falling to ash in the red heart of the embers.

“I will be free,” I repeat. “Because, in the end, no one has the power to imprison me. I was born, bred, crowned, anointed, and wed to a king. No one in Christendom is more a queen than I. No one in the world is more of a queen than I. Only God Himself is above me. Only He can command me, and His command is that I must be free and take my throne.”

TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS

WINTER, 1569