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that man’s hand. She still sobs, her shoulders heaving, and only now do I notice that her lacings are undone, and that she is having to hold her gown in place to keep it from falling to the ground.
    She allows me to fasten her up and then lead her in silence towards Maman’s chambers, which are quite a distance from the tiltyard. My clothes are so heavy with wet it is hard to walk, and by the time we get there we are completely bedraggled. Two of Katherine’s dogs greet us in a frenzy; she crouches down cooing at them, for a moment seeming to have forgotten her grief.
    “Stan, Stim, where are the others?”
    “Maman left them with one of the grooms. The puppies were chewing the hangings.”
    “And Hercules too?”
    “Yes, your monkey too.” I nod. My sister’s pets bring out an abundant tenderness in her. Sometimes I think she is so overflowing with love that she doesn’t know what to do with it all, and the animals lap it up for her. I wonder what it might be like to spill over with feeling. I clutch onto my emotions so tightly. It is not to say I do not feel things, though.
    I call one of the scullions, who arrives with a bucket of hot coals to get the fire going. Soon we have peeled off our wet layers and are sitting by the hearth, Katherine wearing Maman’s best silk nightgown and her fine shawl while I am folded in a woolen blanket. We share a hot toddy, passing it between us, taking tiny sips for fear of burning our mouths.
    “You must leave him be,” I say.
    “But he is my husband,” she sniffs.
    “He is not , Kitty. You will never win.” I know that Katherine’s marriage was part of Northumberland’s scheming, for Jane was wed to Guildford Dudley on the same day.
    “But we are in love.”
    “That doesn’t make any difference,” I say. Her face is scrunched with tears.
    “Pembroke said I am tainted by the treason of my father and sister, and he will not have his son sullied by it.”
    I don’t know how to respond, but another part of my family’s story is coming clear. Pembroke must have changed sides to save his skin when the Queen ousted Jane and that is why he wants no ties to the Greys—we are proof of his own disloyalty.
    “At least Father had the courage to die for his beliefs,” she adds, wiping a string of mucus from her nose with her sleeve.
    I am not so sure that our father was the man Katherine thinks him. He joined the rebels against the crown and was caught running away, that is what Maman has said. But I will not prick my sister’s bubble by repeating it, for Katherine idolized Father. I remember something else Maman said, something about the taint of treason being the one thing that might prevent Katherine from finding herself pushed onto the throne.
    “The Queen’s position is fragile, chérie ,” she said. “And there are many reformers who would see her brought down.”
    But Katherine is not thinking about the throne, nor the danger that presses silently around us. She is filled to the brim with the idea of being in love, and there is no space in her for anything else. I suppose we all have our own way of forgetting, of not looking truth in the eye.
    Maman seeks a way out with her marriage. “It will put us out of harm’s way,” she tells us. But there will be no marriage just yet, for it is too soon, and besides, the Queen barely lets us out of her sight. She has hidden Elizabeth away at Woodstock, in the hope that everyone will forget her. But Elizabeth is unforgettable: everyonewhispers about her, and that is a good thing for us, because as long as the reformers are busy not forgetting Elizabeth, us Greys can merge into the background, or so Maman says.
    “Come, Kitty, we must dress, for they will all be back soon.” I am trying to take her mind off things. “What will you wear? Your blue dress? It is so very becoming.”
    We help each other into our clean linens and kirtles, lacing one another up, tying on our sleeves, plaiting our hair and tucking it up