Mendham, Suffolk

Bess Holland, January 1547

Ihave been in a daze since the arrest of His Grace. Now he is in the Tower alongside his son, the attainted Lord Surrey, and together they await their fate. I do not know how to feel. Everything has been taken from me: the jewels I tried to hide in the vain effort of securing some kind of life for myself, my lands . . . though I suppose none of it was ever really mine.

All my life I have been given everything without ever really having it.

For the first time, I understand how quickly one can testify against those they love most when the axe is in question.

So I testified along with Mary Fitzroy and the duchess. What choice did we have? We are not complete idiots, as much as His Grace may want to think so. I told them everything they wanted to know. The guard patted my cheek and told me I was a good lady—fancy someone still thinks of me as a lady, let alone a good one—and that my property shall be returned to me.

So I wait. For the first time in my life, I do not wait for the duke. I wait for my property, my things, all that I have in this world, and I think about the new start I will make.

I am overcome with a peculiar emotion most foreign to me these past twenty years. Hope. It surges through me, filling me up, spilling over at last in the form of relieved tears.

I have a future. Poor or rich, I have a future.

What will I do? What will I be?

Suddenly the world does not appear a big and empty place waiting to swallow me up in its vastness. It is a world full of people waiting to meet me, adventures waiting to be had, a world where all that has been lost can be reclaimed. . . .

I have a future.