After dinner he goes to his privy rooms with his mother, and they send out for sweet wine and biscuits and cheese and talk into the night. It is long after midnight when he comes to my bedroom and sits heavily on the chair before the fire, and looks into the embers.

“What’s the matter?” I ask. I was half-asleep but I slide from the bed and take a stool to sit beside him. “What is the matter, husband?”

Slowly, his head drops till he is resting it on his hand and then even lower so that his hands are over his face. “It’s the boy,” he says, muffled. “It’s the damned boy.”

The flames flicker quietly in the little room. “The boy?” I repeat.

“I set people about him that were entrusted to lead him into danger,” he says, his head still down, his face hidden from me. “I thought I would entrap him into plotting his freedom.”

“To kill him,” I say steadily.

“To execute him for a crime,” he corrects me. “Breaking his word of surrender. I had some villains come to him and promise they would get him free, they would help him escape. He consented. Then I had them go to Warwick . . .”

I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself crying out. “Not Teddy!”

“Warwick too. It has to be done. And it has to be done now. The two young fools have cut a hole in the vaulting between their rooms and they whisper to each other.”

“They talk to each other? Teddy and the boy?” There is something unbearably tender about the thought of those two, whispering hopes and cheer to each other. “He talks to Teddy?”

“I sent them a plan of escape. The boy agreed, Warwick too once they explained it to him. I sent them a plan that they should take England, raise an army, kill me.”

“They must have known it was hopeless . . .”

“The boy knows, but he is desperate to be free. And then—all of a sudden—it is not hopeless.” He pauses and chokes as if vomit is rising unstoppably in his throat. “Elizabeth, there was my little plot, half a dozen conspirators, a code book, a message to the duchess, plans for an uprising, enough to see a man hanged, all planned and controlled by me, and . . . and . . .” He stops as if he cannot bear to continue. “And then . . .”

I rise from my stool and put my hand on his bowed shoulder. It is like touching the back of the chair, he is rigid with fear. “What then? What happened then, my dear?”

“They have been joined by others. Others that I had not instructed. Others that are supposed to be loyal to me. They are getting messages from all over the country. Men who will risk their lives and their fortunes to get Warwick out of the Tower, men who will put their families and their livelihoods and their property at risk to set the boy free. There is another rebellion brewing, another rebellion after all we have gone through! I have no idea how many men are ready to rise, I have no idea who is faithless and ready to betray me. But it is starting all over again. England wants the boy. They want the boy on the throne, and they are ready to throw me down.”