Young Elizabeth, the second daughter of King Henry VIII of England, is only nine years old. She is living at Hatfield, one of her father's estates, which is modern, commodious, lovely with gardens and a deer park, and only twenty miles from London. Her nanny, Catherine "Cat" Ashley, and her "household" live with her. Her household consists of knights, squires, those who tend and keep the gardens and animals, housemaids, and tutors, as well as those who manage her estate. She has always known that at her birth she was declared heir to the Crown. But she has been living in exile from her father, who removed her from the line of succession and endorsed an act of Parliament declaring both her and her half-sister, Mary, illegitimate. Since she was three years old, Elizabeth has feared death. Death is all around her all the time. And the person who most represents that is her father, who had her mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded when Elizabeth was three years old, as well as his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.
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