I nodded. I had seen Elizabeth when she had someone’s husband marked down for her own. “I know well enough. And he?”

“Very taken with her.”

“Will he come here, d’you think?”

The messenger chuckled. “Not until the princess lets him. He was at her beck and call. I don’t think he could force himself away from her.”

“He’s not a greensick boy,” I said with sudden irritation. “He could decide for himself, I should hope.”

“And she is not a greensick girl,” he said. “This is the next Queen of England and she cannot take her eyes from our lord. So what d’you think might come of that?”

In the absence of any work to do in the household, I found that I spent all my time with the child, Danny, and all my thoughts were with his father. I decided to write to Daniel and address the letter to my father’s old shop in London. If Daniel came looking for me, or sent anyone to seek me, that would be one of the places he would visit first. I would send a copy of it to my lord and ask him to forward it to Calais. Surely there must be emissaries going to the city?

Dear Husband,

It is strange that after all we have been through we should once more be separated, and once again I am in England and you in Calais, but this time I think you are in greater danger than me. I pray every night that you are safe and well.

I had the good fortune to be offered a place on the English ship belonging to Lord Robert and in the hurry of battle I thought it best to take it. I wish now I had found my way to you, but Daniel, I did not know what to do. Also, I had another life to consider. The mother of your child was killed by a French horseman before me, and her last act was to put your son in my hands. I have him with me now and I am caring for him as my own. He is safe and well though he does not speak yet. If you can reply to me you might tell me what should I do? Did he used to talk? And what language does he know?

He is eating well and growing well, and learning to walk more strongly. We are living at Chichester in Sussex with Lord Dudley’s wife until I can find myself a place. I am thinking of going to court or to the Princess Elizabeth, if she will have me.

I wish very much that I could ask you what you think would be the best thing for me to do. I wish very much that you were with me here, or that I were with you. I pray that you are safe, Daniel, and I tell you now, as I should have told you before, that I never stopped loving you even when I left your home. I loved you then, I love you now. I wish we had stayed together then, I wish we were together now. If God ever grants me another chance with you, Daniel, I would want to be your wife once more.

Your wife (if you will let me call myself that),

Hannah Carpenter

I sent the letter to my lord, with a covering note.

My lord,

Your wife has been very kind to me but I am trespassing on her hospitality here. Please give me permission to come to court or to see if the Princess Elizabeth will take me into her service.

Hannah Green

I heard nothing from Daniel, and I had hardly hoped for it, though I could not tell if it was the silence of distance or the silence of death. In his silence I did not know if I was a widow, an errant wife, or just lost to him. I also waited for a message from my lord and heard nothing.

Waiting to hear from Lord Robert, I was able to recognize that his wife was waiting for him too. Both of us would look up eagerly when we heard a horseman cantering up the lane toward the house. Both of us would gaze out of the window when the early wintry evenings swept down around the castle and another day was gone with no word from him. As each day went by I saw her hopes of him die away. Amy Dudley was slowly but surely being forced to acknowledge that whatever love he had felt for her, when he was a young man and she a young woman, had been worn out by his years of ambition when he had followed his father’s train and left her behind, and then eroded completely by his years in the Tower when his first thought had been to keep himself alive. In those years, when he had fought to keep his wits together and not go mad under the loneliness of imprisonment and the fear of his death sentence, his wife was the very last thing he considered.

I was waiting for him, but not like a resentful woman in love. I was waiting for him as the man who could set me free from this sleeping daze of domestic boredom. I was accustomed to running my own shop, to paying my own way, to earning my own money. To live off another person’s reluctant charity was very galling to me. And I was used to living in the world; even the tiny dull world of English Calais was more exciting than life in this country house where nothing changed but the weather and the seasons and, God knew, they moved as slowly as years, as decades. And I wanted news of the queen, of her confinement, of the long-waited coming of her child. If she had a son now, the English people would forgive her the loss of Calais, the awful winter that England had suffered this year, even the illness which was plaguing the country in this season of cold weather and rain.

At last a note came from court.

I shall be with you next week. RD

Amy Dudley reacted coolly, with great dignity. She did not ask them to turn the house upside down to prepare for his arrival, she did not summon tenants and neighbors for a feast. She saw that the silver plate and the pewter trenchers were given an extra polish, and that the best linen was laid out for her bed, but other than that, she made no special provision for the return of the lord. Only I saw that she was waiting like a dog waits for his master’s step on the threshold; no one else would have noticed the tension in her body every day, from daybreak, when he might come early, till dusk, when he might arrive late. She took to going to bed as soon as it grew dark, as if the days of waiting were so unbearable that she wanted to sleep through the hours when he was not likely to arrive.

Finally, on Friday, when there was nothing to put before him but carp from the moat, we saw his train coming down the lane, his standard at the head of a trotting column of riders, smartly in step, two by two, all bright and smart in his livery, and Robert before them all, like a young king; and riding behind him – I squinted my eyes against the low winter sun shining toward me – was John Dee, the reverend and respected Catholic chaplain to Bishop Bonner.

I stepped up to the window of the upper gallery where I had been playing with Danny, so that I could see Robert Dudley’s welcome. The front door of the house was torn open and Amy Dudley was on the top step, her hands clasped before her, the picture of demure self-control, but I knew she was raging to be with him. I could hear the rest of the household flinging themselves down the stairs and skidding on the polished floorboards to be in their places when the honored guest walked into the hall.

Lord Robert pulled up his horse, jumped from the saddle, threw the reins to a waiting groom, tossed some remark over his shoulder to John Dee and bowed and kissed his wife’s hand as if he had been away for a couple of nights and not for most of their married life.

She dropped a cool curtsey and then turned to Mr. Dee and nodded her head, wasting little politeness on the bishop’s curate. I smiled, I did not think Robert would like to see his friend slighted, she was a fool to snub him.