I can hear the sound of hooves on the road and we turn back to the house. I see Montague’s standard rippling above the hedgerows and when we walk into the stable yard he is dismounting from his horse. He comes quickly towards the two of us, smiling, drops to his knee for my blessing, and then rises. “I have news from Greenwich,” he says. “Good news.”

“The princess is to return to court?” Geoffrey guesses. “Didn’t I say so?”

“Even better than that,” Montague says. He turns to me. “It is you who are invited to return to court,” he says. “Lady Mother, I am here with the king’s own invitation. The exile is over, you are to return.”

I don’t know what to say. I look at his smiling face, and I struggle for words. “A restoration?”

“A complete restoration. It will be as it was before. The princess in her palace, you at her side.”

“God be praised,” Geoffrey exclaims. “You will command Princess Mary’s household again, just as you used to do. You will be where you should be, where we all should be, at court, and places and fees will come your way again, will come to all of us.”

“In debt, Geoffrey?” Montague asks with a slight mocking smile.

“I doubt you could manage on a small estate, constantly going to law with the neighbors,” Geoffrey says irritably. “All I want is for us to have our own again. Our Lady Mother should be at the head of the court, and we should all be there too. We are Plantagenets; we were born to rule, the least we can do is advise.”

“And I will care for the princess,” I say—the only thing that matters to me.

“Lady Governess to the princess again.” Montague takes my hand and smiles at me. “Congratulations.”

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, JUNE 1536

“That’s enough.” Montague nods to one of the guards who rides into the crowd, crushing people with his big horse, and takes the flat of his sword and delivers a thudding blow to the young loyalist.

“Montague!” I say, shocked. “He was just cheering for us.”

“He can’t,” Montague says grimly. “You’re back at court, Lady Mother, and we are restored, but it’s not all just as it was. The king is not as he was. I think he will never be the same again.”

“I thought he was so happy with Jane Seymour?” I ask. “I thought she was the only woman he has ever loved?”

Montague hides a grim smile at my sarcasm. “He’s happy with her,” he says cautiously. “But he’s not so much in love that he can bear even one word of criticism, one word of doubt. And someone shouting for you, or for the princess, or for the Church, is the sort of criticism that he cannot bear to hear.”

My rooms at court are the ones I had before, so long ago, when I was here as lady-in-waiting to Katherine and she was a queen of only twenty-three years old, pulled out of poverty and despair by a seventeen-year-old king, and we thought that nothing would ever go wrong again.

I go to pay my respects to the new queen in her rooms, and make my curtsey to Jane Seymour, a girl I first met as a shy, rather incompetent maid-in-waiting to Katherine. From her blanched hauteur, I assume that she remembers being scolded by me for clumsiness, and I make sure I curtsey low, and stay down until she invites me to rise.

I show not the slightest hint of my amusement as I survey her room and her ladies. Every wooden boss that used to bear a falcon or a bold A has been lathed clean and sanded down, and now there is a J or a rising phoenix. Her unctuous motto, “Bound to Obey and Serve,” is being embroidered by her ladies on a banner of Tudor green. They greet me pleasantly. Some of them are old friends. Elizabeth Darrell served Katherine with me, Frances Grey’s half sister Mary Brandon is here and, most surprisingly of all, Jane Boleyn, the widow of George Boleyn, who provided fatal evidence against her own husband and her sister-in-law Anne. She seems to have recovered with remarkable swiftness from her grief and the disaster in her family, and she curtseys to me very politely.

Queen Jane’s court amazes me. To appoint Jane Boleyn as your lady-in-waiting is to knowingly welcome a spy who will stoop to anything. Surely, she must know that since Jane Boleyn sent her own husband and sister-in-law to the gallows she will hardly flinch from entrapping a stranger. But then I understand. These are not ladies of Jane’s choosing, these are women placed here by their kinsmen to scoop up patronage and fees and to catch the king’s eye; these are vile place servers inserted here for their reward. This is not an English queen’s court in any sense that I would understand it. This is a rat pit.

I am allowed to write to the princess, though I may not visit her yet. I am patient under this ban, certain that the king will bring her to court. Queen Jane speaks kindly of her, and asks my advice about sending her new clothes and a riding cape. Together we choose a new gown and some sleeves of deep red velvet that I know will suit her, and send them by royal messenger north, only thirty miles to Hunsdon, where she is preparing to come to court.

I write to ask of her health, of her happiness. I write telling her that I will see her soon, that we will be happy together again, that I hope the king will let me run her household and it will be as it was before. I say that the court is calm and merry again, and that she will find in Jane a queen and a friend. I don’t remark that they have much in common, being only eight years apart in age, except of course that Mary was born and bred a princess and Jane the uninteresting daughter of a country knight, and I wait for a reply.

Dearest Lady Margaret,

I am so sorry, and so sad, that I cannot come to court and be with you again. I have had the misfortune to offend my father the king, and though I would do anything to obey and honor him, I cannot disobey and dishonor my sainted mother or my God. Pray for me.