The first time, she’d been a child—a nine-year-old girl aware mostly that the boy whose birthday she shared had suddenly become the most powerful person in England. The second time, she had been a young woman, marked by fear and grief, watching her dearest friend steadily take her oath as the first Queen Regnant in English history. Today, she was old. Sixty-seven last month, though she had been remarkably fortunate in her health. If her shoulders and wrists ached in the damp, she could still see to read and embroider, and still had enough mischief and laughter to enjoy her grandchildren. Ten of them living, and all of them present in the abbey on this day. This day in which Anne Isabella Tudor would take her formal oaths and be anointed the queen she had been since her mother’s last breath. The queen is dead, long live the queen. Minuette herself had been with Elizabeth at the end. Summoned from Wynfield Mote in March by a concerned Robert Cecil, she had arrived at Richmond Palace to find her friend obviously ill but stubborn to the last.
