Nothing happens. Painfully, nothing happens at all. I just have to wait. I think of Jane, living in the Partridges’ house, waiting and waiting for Queen Mary to forgive and release her, certain that Her Majesty would be bound to forgive and release her—and then the priest coming to tell her she would die the next morning. Some nights I wake in tears dreaming that I am Jane, and that my time of waiting is ending, and that this dawn I will have to make the short walk to the green. But then I roll over in my bed and reach for my baby in his cradle, rosy from crying, hungry for his feed, his feet kicking with impatience, and I put him to my breast and feel him suckle and know that here is powerful innocent life that cannot be murdered, and that one morning, one day, I am going to take this little baby out to his freedom.
My little sister Mary visits me with a basket of new asparagus. “Someone gave me this from his garden,” she says vaguely, heaving it up on the table. “I thought the lieutenant’s cook might steam it for you with some fresh butter.”
“He will, thank you,” I say. I bend to kiss her and she hauls herself up onto the window seat. “Is that Ned’s window?” she asks, looking across at the White Tower where a blue scarf flutters from one of the hinges.
“Yes. He puts out a scarf to show me he is well in the morning, and I do the same,” I say. “If he was ill, he would put out a white scarf, and if he is released, he will fly nothing.”
She nods. She does not ask what standard will be flown from the window for bad news. Nobody in the Tower wants to prepare for bad news. Only my sister Jane had the courage to look forward to her death and write to me of learning to die.
“The court is leaving London,” she says. “I’m to go, too. She’s not being unpleasant. You would think I was nothing to do with you and no kinswoman to her at all. She treats me as any one of her ladies. She likes any one of them better than me; she gives Thomasina the dwarf more attention. I go everywhere with the court and I dine with the ladies. She barely speaks to me and she often fails to see I am there. But she treats others far worse.”
“Oh, who does she treat worse?” I ask, intrigued.
“Our cousin Margaret Douglas for one,” Mary says quietly. “She’s under house arrest at the Charterhouse at Sheen, suspected of treason.”
I muffle my gasp with a hand to my mouth. “Another cousin under arrest? And in our old house?”
“They say that she was trying to get her son Henry Stuart married to Mary Queen of Scots.”
“Was she?”
“Almost certainly; but why should she not? It would be a wonderful match for him, an adequate match for her, and an English king consort in Scotland would be better for us than a Frenchman.”
“Is the whole family arrested?”
“Her husband is held here, I think, in the Tower. But her son has disappeared.”
I put my hands to my head, as if I would pull my own hair. “What? This is madness.”
“I know,” Mary says gloomily. “Elizabeth is crazed with fear like her father. And I have to serve her. And I have to go wherever she fancies.”
“If only you could get away,” I whisper.
Mary shakes her head. “They’d use it against you. No, I’ll go on progress and pretend to enjoy it.”
I put my hand over hers. “Where are you going this year?”
“North. We’re to stay at Nottingham, and she’s commanded a masque. Everyone is in it. Me, too. I play an angel of peace on a swing. The masque is called Britain and the King. It goes on for three days.”
“Heavens.”
“It opens with Pallas on a unicorn,” she says. “Elizabeth, I suppose. Followed by two women on horseback, Prudence and Temperance. Next day: Peace. Last day: Malice is thrown down and we all sing.”
I can’t help but laugh at her gloomy expression and dour description. “I am sure it will be beautiful.”
“Oh, yes, there are to be lions and elephants and all sorts. But the point of it is two women united, the friendship between two women. And the other message is that British kings inherit by blood, they’re not chosen.”
“What does she mean? Is she sending a message to Mary Queen of Scots?”
“She’s trying to. Elizabeth is telling Queen Mary that they are monarchs of Britain together, they can rule together: Mary in the north, Elizabeth in the south, and that Mary will be a sister queen and heir. She’s practically promising her the throne. She says it is passed by inheritance to the closest heir. Not by choice, not by religion, not by will.”
I take three strides across the little room till I am brought up short by the table. “Finally, she dares to openly deny me.”
“Still not open, still not denial,” Mary says angrily. “The masque is not to be performed before the people. Nobody would understand it unless they had a classical education—I’ve had to explain it to half the ladies. She doesn’t have the courage to declare herself. She is putting you aside by getting that spaniel Archbishop Parker to do her work for her; she is announcing it in a masque. She wants the court to know that you are not her heir, that you are shamed, that your son is a bastard; but she does not dare tell the country.”
“Oh dear God, Mary, has the archbishop declared that my marriage is invalid?”
“He has. And called that poor baby a bastard.” Mary nods grimly towards the cradle, where my innocent son sleeps quietly, not knowing that he is being robbed of his name. “God forgive him. She hopes that nobody will speak in support of a woman taken in lust, and nobody will turn out for a bastard baby. You are ruined, and he is disinherited. Ned, of course, is shown to be dishonorable.”
I pick up one of the puppies, and hold it under my chin for comfort. “The archbishop is a liar” is all I say.
Mary nods. “Everyone knows it.”
For a moment we sit in grim silence.
“And I have to dance in her rotten masque,” she spits. “I am in the train of Pallas on the first day, and I sit on my swing and then dance for Peace on the last. She knows what she is doing when she makes my dancing send a message to that papist Mary. Me! Jane Grey’s sister sending a message of hope to a papist heir of England.”
“She knows what she is doing,” I agree. “She has cured herself of her fear of us. You will never have a son, she’s sure of that. And now nobody will support my son, named as a bastard to an unchaste mother.”
“Oh, she’s won,” Mary says dismissively. “We weren’t even conspiring against her and she has worked against us as if we were the vilest of enemies. Margaret Douglas was nothing but fanciful talk and ambition for her son, but she is named as a traitor, too. She’s not much of a kinswoman, our queen. There’s little joy in being close to her. D’you think she will free you, now she has ruined you?”
I get up and go to the window.
“What are you doing?” she asks as I swing open the casement.
“I am hanging out a black ribbon,” I say quietly. “For bad news. Because nobody is going to call for my release now.”
The court leaves London and I think of Mary sitting on her swing as an angel of peace, and dancing for Elizabeth in the masque, which tells Mary Queen of Scots that she—a papist, a Frenchwoman—is to be Elizabeth’s heir and that we are to be forgotten. I think it is hard for me, here in the Tower with the man I love imprisoned a hundred yards from my window; but it is perhaps even harder for my sister Mary, in smiling service to a woman that she knows is my enemy, her enemy, the vindictive enemy of every woman that she sees as a rival.