Now I expect to spend only a week or so before the birth in this gloomy twilight, banned from the outside world, seeing no man but a priest through a shaded screen. Then I will have six long weeks of isolation after the birth. In my absence I know that My Lady will relish ruling the court, receiving congratulations on the birth of her grandchild, supervising the christening and ordering the feast, while I am locked in my rooms and no man—not even my husband, her son—can see me.

My maid is bringing a green gown from the wardrobe for my official farewell. I wave it away, I am so very tired of wearing Tudor green, when the door bursts open and Maggie comes running into the room and flings herself on her knees before me. “Elizabeth, I mean Your Grace! Elizabeth! Oh, Elizabeth, save Teddy!”

The baby seems to jump in alarm in my belly as I leap off the bed and catch at the hangings as the room swings dizzily around me. “Teddy?”

“They’re taking him! They’re taking him away!”

“Careful!” my sister Cecily warns at once, hurrying to my side and steadying me on my feet. I don’t even hear her.

“Taking him where?”

“To the Tower!” Maggie cries out. “To the Tower! Oh! Come quick and stop them. Please!”

“Go to the king,” I throw at Cecily over my shoulder as I quickly head to the door. “Give him my compliments and ask if I may come to see him at once.” I grab my cousin Maggie’s arm and say, “Come on, I’ll come with you and stop them.”

Hurriedly, I go barefoot down the long stone corridors, the herbs brushed by my trailing nightgown, then Maggie sprints ahead of me up the circular stone staircase to the nursery floor, where she and Edward and my little sisters Catherine and Bridget have their rooms with their tutors and their maids. But then I see her fall back, and I hear the noise of half a dozen heavy boots coming down the stairs. “You can’t take him!” I hear her say. “I have the queen here! You can’t take him.”

As they come down the curve of the stair I see first the booted feet of the leading man, then his deep scarlet leggings, and then his bright scarlet tunic trimmed and quartered with gold lace: the uniform of the yeomen of the guard, Henry’s newly created personal troop. Behind him comes another, and another; they have sent a corps of ten men to collect a pale and shaking little boy of eleven. Edward is so afraid that the last man is holding him under the armpits so that he does not fall down the stairs; his feet are dangling, his skinny legs kicking as they half-carry him to where I am standing at the foot of the stairs. He looks like a doll with brown tousled curls and wide frightened eyes.

“Maggie!” he cries, on seeing his sister. “Maggie, tell them to put me down!”