“But I never dreamed such a thing,” I say steadily. “I never thought such a thing or said such a thing or wrote such a thing. I never plotted with any man, dead or alive.”

“But you must have been sorry when John Fisher was executed,” she says quickly. “Such a good man, such a holy man?”

“I was sorry that he opposed the king,” I say. “But I did not oppose the king.”

“Well then, you were sorry when the king put the Dowager Princess Katherine of Aragon aside?”

“Of course I was. She was my friend. I was sorry that their marriage was invalid. But I said nothing in her defense, and I swore the oath to declare it was invalid.”

“And you wanted to serve the Lady Mary even when the king declared that she was a bastard. I know you did, you can’t deny that!”

“I loved the Lady Mary, and I still do,” I reply. “I would serve her whatever her position in the world may be. But I make no claim for her.”

“But you think of her as a princess,” she presses me. “In your heart.”

“I think the king must be the one to decide that,” I say.

She pauses, stands up, and takes a short turn around the cramped room. “I won’t have you here forever,” she warns me. “I’ve told my husband that I can’t house you and your ladies forever. And my lord Cromwell will want to make an end to this.”

“I would be happy to leave,” I say quietly. “I would undertake to stay quietly at my home and see no one and write to no one. I have no sons left to me. I would see only my daughter and my grandchildren. I could promise that. They could release me on parole.”

She turns and looks at me, her face alive with malice, and she laughs outright at the poverty of my hopes. “What home?” she asks. “Traitors don’t have homes, they lose everything. Where do you think you will go? Your great castle? Your beautiful manor? Your fine house in London? None of these is yours anymore. You won’t be going anywhere unless you confess. And I won’t have you here. There’s only one other place for you.”

I wait in silence for her to name the one place in the world that I most dread.

“The Tower.”

THE ROAD TO THE TOWER, MAY 1539

It is a strange, almost dreamlike journey on the water. I am alone in an unmarked barge, as if I have shed my family standards and my name, as if I am at last free from my dangerous inheritance. It is dusk and the sun is setting behind us, laying a long finger of golden light along the river, and the waterbirds are flying to the shore and settling down, splashing and quacking, for the night. I can hear a cuckoo somewhere in the water meadows and I remember how Geoffrey used to listen for the first cuckoo of spring when he was a little boy and we lived with the sisters at Syon. Now the abbey is closed, and Geoffrey is destroyed, and only that faithless bird, the cuckoo, is still calling.

I stand at the stern and look back at the swirling gray waters of the wake and watch the setting sun turning the mackerel sky pink and cream. I have sailed down this river many times in my life; I have been in the coronation barge, as an honored guest, a member of the royal family, I have been in my own barge, under my own standard, I have been the wealthiest woman in England, holding the highest of honors, with four handsome sons standing beside me, each of them fit to inherit my name and my fortune. And now I have almost nothing, and the nameless barge goes quietly down the river unobserved. As the muffled drum sounds and the rowers keep the beat and the barge moves forward with a steady swishing thrust through the water, I feel that it has been like a dream, all of it a dream, and that the dream is coming to an end.

As the dark figure of the Tower comes into sight, the great portcullis of the water gate rolls up at our approach; the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, is waiting on the steps. They run out the gangplank and I walk steadily towards him, my head high. He bows very low as he sees me, and I see his face is pale and strained. He takes my hand to help me to the steps, and as he moves forward I see the boy who was hidden behind him. I see him, and I recognize him, and my heart stops still at the sight of him as if I have been jolted awake and I know that this is not a dream but the worst thing that has ever happened in a long, long life.

It is my grandson Harry. It is my grandson Harry. They have arrested Montague’s boy.

He is whooping with joy to see me, that’s what makes me weep as his arms come round my waist and he dances around me. He thinks I have come to take him home, and he is laughing with delight. He tries to board the barge, and it takes me a few moments before I can explain to him that I am imprisoned myself, and I see his little face blench with horror as he tries not to cry.

We grip each other’s hand and go towards the dark entrance together. They are housing us in the garden tower. I fall back and look at Sir William. “Not here,” I say. I will not tell him that I cannot bear to be imprisoned where my brother waited and waited for his freedom. “Not this tower. I cannot manage the stairs. They’re too narrow, too steep. I can’t go up and down them.”

“You won’t be going up and down them,” he says with grim humor. “You’re just going up. We’ll help you.”

They half carry me up the winding circular stair to the first-floor room. Harry has a little room above mine, overlooking the green. I have a larger room, overlooking the green out of one window and the river through a narrow arrow-slit. There is no fire made in either grate, the rooms are cold and cheerless. The walls are bare stone, carved here and there with the names and insignia of previous prisoners. I cannot bear to look for the names of my father or my brother or of my sons.

Harry goes to the window and points out his cousin, Courtenay’s boy, in the narrow streets below. He is housed with his mother Gertrude in the Beauchamp Tower; their rooms are more comfortable, Edward is very bored and very lonely but he and his mother get enough to eat and were given warm clothes this winter. With the high spirits of an eleven-year-old boy, Harry is more cheerful already, pleased that I am with him. He asks me to come to visit Gertrude Courtenay and is shocked when I say that I am not allowed to leave my room, that when he comes in to see me, the door will be locked behind him, and he can only go out when a guard comes to release him. He looks at me, his innocent face frowning, as if he is puzzled. “But we will be able to go home?” he asks. “We will go home soon?”

I am almost brave enough to assure him that he will go home soon. There may be evidence, real or pretend, against Gertrude, they may concoct something against me, but Harry is only eleven and Edward is thirteen years old and there can be nothing against these boys but the fact that they were born Plantagenets. I think even the king cannot be so far gone in his fear of my family as to keep two boys like this in the Tower as traitors.