But then I pause in my confident reckoning, pause and remember that his father took my brother at just this age, for just this reason, and my brother came out only to walk along the stone path, to Tower Hill, to the scaffold.

THE TOWER, LONDON, SUMMER 1539

They produce the dozens of letters that Gertrude is said to have written, they produce one letter which I wrote to my son Reginald to assure him of my love which was never delivered, and then Thomas Cromwell himself lifts a satchel and like a street magician draws out the badge that Tom Darcy gave me, the white silk badge embroidered with the five wounds of Christ with the white rose above it.

The house is silent as Thomas Cromwell flourishes this. Perhaps he hoped that they would clamor in an uproar, shouting for my head. Cromwell offers it as conclusive evidence of my guilt. He does not accuse me of any crime—even now, having an embroidered badge in an old box in your house is not a crime—and the houses of the commons and the lords barely respond. Perhaps they are sated with attainders, perhaps they are weary of death. Perhaps many of them have a badge just like it, tucked away in an old box in their country houses, from the time when they thought that good times might come, and there were many pilgrims marching for grace. At any rate, it is all that Cromwell has for evidence and I am to be kept in the Tower at His Majesty’s wish and my grandson Harry and Gertrude and her little boy must stay too.

THE TOWER, LONDON, WINTER 1539

Only the outside world moves on. Ursula writes to me that Constance and Geoffrey have a baby, to be called Catherine, and that the king is to marry a new wife. They have found a princess who is prepared to marry a man she has never seen and of whom she can only have heard the worst reports. Anne of Cleves is to make the long journey, from her Protestant homeland to the country that the king and Cromwell are destroying, next spring.

THE TOWER, LONDON, SPRING 1540

Harry grows taller and taller, out of his hose and out of his shoes, and I have to beg the warder to request new clothes for him. We are allowed a fire in our rooms only when it gets very cold, and I see my fingers thicken and redden with chilblains. It grows dark very early in the little rooms, it stays dark for a long time, dawn comes later and later through this cold winter, and when there is a mist coming off the river or the clouds are very low it never gets light at all.

I try to be cheerful and optimistic for Harry’s sake, and read with him in Latin and French; but when he has gone to sleep in his little cell and I am locked in mine, I pull the thin blanket over my head and lie dry-eyed in the fusty darkness and know that I am too beaten by grief to cry.

We wait as spring comes to green the trees in the Tower garden and we can hear the blackbirds singing in the constable’s orchard. The two boys are allowed out on the green to play, and someone sets up a butt for them and gives them bows and arrows; someone else gives them a set of bowls and marks out a green for them. Though the days get warmer, it is still very cold in our rooms, and so I ask the warder to allow me to send for some clothes. I am served by my lady-in-waiting and by the master controller’s maid, and I am ashamed that I cannot pay their wages. The warder presents a petition for me and I receive some clothes and some money, and, then, surprisingly, for no reason, Gertrude Courtenay is released.

William Fitzwilliam himself comes in with the warder to tell me the good news.

“Are we to go too?” I ask him calmly. I put my hand on Harry’s thin shoulder and feel him shudder like a captive merlin at the thought of freedom.

“I am sorry, your ladyship,” Thomas Philips, the warder, says. “There are no orders to release you yet.”

I feel Harry’s shoulders slump, and Thomas sees the look on my face. “Maybe soon,” he says. He turns to Harry. “But you are not to lose your playmate, so you won’t be lonely,” he says, trying to sound cheerful.