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usual post is admiral of the narrow seas, will command the eastern squadron at Dover.” I looked at Hunsdon. “Lord Hunsdon, you will command the forces responsible for my safety, based near London. I will appoint the Norrises, Sir Henry the father and his son Sir John, alias “Black Jack,” as general and under-general of the southeastern counties. Young Robert Cecil shall serve as master of ordnance for the main army. And you”—I looked straight at Robert Dudley—“Lord Leicester, shall be lieutenant general of land forces for the defense of the realm.” He appeared stunned, as did the others. “See that you do it better than you did in the Netherlands.” There, that was my reply to his earlier insult.
    As they left my presence, I noted they looked surprised—and relieved—to have had all the appointments settled. Good warriors all, their thoughts were already with the battlefield and the work ahead.

    Now, evening having finally fallen, the quietness of night descending like a gentle rain, I could rest at last. My bedchamber, facing the river, bathed in reflected light for a few moments before the gold faded. It caressed a painting of my late sister, Queen Mary, hanging on the opposite wall. I had kept it to remind me of her sorrows and, while taking heed of her mistakes, not to judge her soul. I had always thought it sad, the hopeful little glint in her eyes, her mouth curling as if she had a secret. Dangling from a brooch on her bosom was the creamy, tear-shaped pearl that her bridegroom, Philip, had presented to her. But now—was it a trick of the light?—her eyes seemed not wistful but sly. The curve of her mouth seemed a sneer. The whole picture pulsated with a reddish glow, as if fiends were backlighting it. She had brought the evil of Spain to our shores, entwined us with that country. Philip’s wedding entourage, in its Armada, had arrived in July thirty-four years ago, as it would again, coming to finish what it had started with the 1554 marriage to Mary: returning England to the papal fold.
    I would store the painting away. And as for the pearl—costly though it was, it had brought a curse with it. Back to its owner it must go. Even selling it would not rid me of it. When this was over ... When this was over, let Philip have his cursed pearl back. It had killed my sister and now it was tainting the room.
    The sunset glow ebbed away, and the painting returned to normal, its demonic tint gone. My sister’s face reverted to that of the proud, hopeful girl who had welcomed Philip as her bridegroom.
    Marjorie and Catherine were standing behind me, tactfully quiet but most likely wondering what I was doing. I turned. “We may make ready for sleep now,” I said. “I wish to keep you two close by, but I shall send the younger ones away until the danger is past.” I had made Marjorie’s husband and her son, the Norris soldiers, head of the land forces in the southeast, and I had appointed Catherine’s husband to be overall commander of both land and sea forces. In addition, her father, Lord Hunsdon, was to see to our personal safety. “I fear we are all bound together in this. My Crow. My Cat.” Under duress, I reverted back to my old nicknames for them: Marjorie, with her dark eyes and hair and her raucous voice, I called Crow. My gentle, quiet, purring Catherine, my Cat.

    I lay in the darkness that in early summer is never true darkness. The usual sounds of merrymaking had vanished from the river flowing past the palace. The realm was holding its breath. Nothing was moving on the water or on the land.
    It had come down to this moment. Was there any way I could have avoided it, taken a different path that would have led elsewhere, to a safer destination? Not if I had remained true to what I was. My birth itself sanctioned the bringing of Protestantism to my country. To abjure it once I reached adulthood would have