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managed to bellow before he was kicked in the chestand fell back again.
    Someone grabbed my arm and I tried to pull away, but it was Geoffrey Scovill. He had leaped over the fence to follow me. “Come back,” he pleaded.
    Three guards charged toward us. I saw a picket raised high before crashing down on Geoffrey’s head. The young constable pitched into the mud, unconscious.
    I heard an angry scream and turned around. My father had broken free again and was running straight toward Margaret. Just as a soldier caught up with him and hit him in the back with a picket, my father pulled something loose from his doublet. Something small.
    As he crashed to his knees before her, I saw him throw a dark bag at the flames crawling up Margaret’s writhing body.
    A few seconds later there was an enormous explosion, like a dozen thunderstorms striking the ground at one spot. Fiery black coils billowed toward me. And it all went black.

4
    I watched the sun slip down behind the church spires of London. There was no more fine drizzle. By late afternoon, the sun had become a fiery orb, shriveling all the clouds and devouring the clammy mist that clung to feet and wheels and horses’ hooves. As that sun now trembled atop the crowded western horizon, my eyes itched and stung, though whether it was because of the sun’s rays or the black smoke of Smithfield from hours past, I couldn’t tell.
    I sat facing backward in a royal river barge, my wrists shackled. I couldn’t see where I was going, but I felt the sureness of the four oarsmen’s sticks, their deep rowing. These men, wearing the green-and-white livery of the House of Tudor, knew my destination. And the other boats on the Thames River, even the Londoners on the shores, I was sure they knew. Whenever we passed someone, I could feel the curious stares crawling over me, hear the burst of gossip: “Who’s that they’ve got now?” An old woman dumping slop jars into the river watched me for as long as she could, her neck craning while she leaned out so far I expected her to fall in.
    All of the time, I sat straight and still, my shoulders as far back and my chin as high up as I had been schooled from the time I could walk. I didn’t want to show my fear. And I most definitely didn’t want anyone to see the man lying on the bottom of the barge, his bandaged head propped up on my skirts. My calves ached from the pressure of Geoffrey Scovill’s head, but I couldn’t send him back down onto the wet bottom of the barge. His slack face, his closed eyes, the trickle of dried blood on his right cheek filled me with furious guilt. I had so much to think about, to pray over, to try to understand, before arriving at whatever place they were taking me to, but here was an immediate difficulty thrown into my very lap.
    Just as the sun disappeared,and a sickly dusk bathed the river in orange-violet light, Geoffrey woke with a groan.
    His wrists were unshackled, and he reached out, feeling the bandage around his head with confusion. Slowly, shakily, he sat up and turned to face me, heaved himself up to find a seat. Uncertain eyes met mine. I dreaded the coming confrontation.
    “Do you know where you are?” I asked.
    Recognition filled his face. “I appear to be in a king’s barge,” he said, his voice raspy. “Why?”
    I looked forward at one pair of oarsmen at the bow and peered behind at the other. The barge was so long they shouldn’t be able to hear us.
    “I’ve been arrested with my father, and I believe you have been as well,” I said softly.
    He took it much better than I expected. His face stayed calm. “What are the charges?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied. “I told them my name, and my father’s name, and then they went away for a long time and left me under guard. They put us both in a wagon, and we went to a building; but then they seemed to change their minds and brought us to the river. We sat in the wagon for two hours before they put us into this boat. I never