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door handle, she said, “Mary!” and I thought, now she will say something.
    I turned to look at her.
    “Send in Susan Clarencieux and Jane Dormer.”
    I was utterly deflated. It was almost too much for me to put one foot before the other and leave the room.
    •  •  •
    I feel a squeeze on my shoulder. “Let me take you to your bed, ma petite chérie .” It is Maman. My neck is severely cricked, and I realize I must have dropped off, though how, with the racket of the musicians and the stomping of the dancers, I do not know.
    She scoops me up in her arms and carries me from the great hall, taking me, not to the maids’ quarters, but to her own, gently depositing me on the big tester bed and beginning to undo my clothes.
    “But, Maman, what of your bedfellows?” I ask sleepily, remembering how many ladies are sharing this room.
    “Fret not, Mouse,” she says. “I shall see to it.” She unpeels my clothes, layer by layer, until I am just in my shift and sinking into feathers as if on a cloud. “Better?” she asks.
    “Better,” I reply. We sit in silence for a while, she stroking my hair, but I cannot stop thinking about Jane; much as I have tried to make sense of it all, I cannot fill the spaces in the story. “Maman,” I ask, “why was it that Jane was made Queen?” My mind is a thicket of tangled questions.
    “Oh, Mouse, I don’t think—”
    “Do not say I am too young. Tell me, Maman. I am old enough to know the truth.”
    I have seen our great family tree, a long roll of parchment painted with meandering gilded branches, and curlicues of vegetation, with birds and small creatures scattered here and there, and what appear to be fruits hanging in clusters but are in fact tiny portraits. Father had unrolled it once for my sisters and me, on the floor of the great hall at Bradgate, and pointed out exactly how we come to have our royal blood. He showed us the first Tudor king, the seventh Henry, our great-grandfather, and then with his finger followed the meandering gilded lines, finding all our cousins so we could see how we are connected.
    “Young King Edward— pauvre petit —he named her his heir. There were simply no boys to be had.”
    “But Mary and Elizabeth?”
    “His sisters? There were problems of legitimacy and your sister, Jane, she was perfect—of the new faith, pious, learned, and of an age to birth boys: an ideal choice.” She pauses and swallows, as if to stop her feelings from spilling out.
    “But why were you not named before Jane, Maman?”
    “Oh, chérie ,” she says, drooping visibly at the shoulders. “I set aside my claim in favor of her.”
    I am trying to tug this fact out from the tangle in my head, to get a proper look at it. “So it was you?” I stop myself from saying it was her fault, but I am thinking it. Her eyes are glossy with tears, so I offer my handkerchief, which she takes without looking at me.
    “I must live with the shame of it,” she says. “J’ai honte, jusque au coeur.”
    “Ashamed to the heart,” I repeat. “But why did you do it?”
    She sighs again, as if the air in her is poisoned and she must get it out of her. “Your father, Mouse, he was in the thrall of the Lord Protector, Northumberland, at the time. He was caught in Northumberland’s web. I tell myself I had no choice. Whether that is the truth or not . . .” She stops. “We all deceive ourselves sometimes, Mouse. You will learn that with age.” The candle gutters and spits, its flame diminishing. “And when Northumberland knew theyoung King Edward was dying, he conspired, with your father, to wed his son Guildford Dudley to Jane.” There is a flash of anger in her eyes. “I never sanctioned that . But my word held no weight against theirs.”
    At last the knot in my head begins to untangle. “Northumberland wanted to see his son as king, then?”
    “Father was a fool in the face of Northumberland, became infected with his ambition. That path always leads to the