Lady of Misrule

Elizabeth Tilney is sixteen and Catholic, and she volunteers to escort Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day queen, across the Tower of London to her imprisonment. She cannot say why she offered. She wants some distance from home, and she expects the job to be short, since everyone assumes Jane will be freed once the new queen is crowned.

The two girls are shut in together in a room in the Gentleman Gaoler's house, and they are badly matched. Jane is Protestant, icily self-composed and idealistic. Elizabeth is nothing of the kind.

What they share is contempt for Jane's new husband, seventeen-year-old Guildford Dudley, who is held in a neighboring tower. Petulant and loudly aggrieved, he insists on his right to a daily walk with his wife.

The story runs through the increasingly turbulent last months of 1553, as Jane's captivity drags on. Elizabeth and Jane settle into living side by side, and Elizabeth is slowly pulled into the strained marriage between Jane and Guildford.

When the new year arrives, the situation veers into unforeseen danger, and Elizabeth's new loyalties are tested. This is historical fiction set inside one prison, told through an observer at the edge of a royal tragedy, with a mix of friction, dry humor and rising threat.