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“Yes. I have only just now begun to believe it.”

So that was what all this was about. The tears, the scruples, the evasiveness.

I embraced her, feeling her healthy, compact body against me.

A miracle. For I had thought some punishment lurked, and a child would never be granted me.

That Sunday, a Te Deum was sung in all the churches in thanksgiving for the Queen’s pregnancy. That meant it was officially announced throughout Christendom, and that everyone would hear of it: the Pope, the Emperor, Francis, the lingering rebels in the North. Truly it was a sign that peace had come again to England, that the horrible upheavals of the past decade were over, like a passing stormaks and doublets and hose and shoes, all in black. When he suggested perhaps the quantity was excessive, I insisted that he was mistaken. I ordered Cromwell to select all the black onyx from the Jewel House, and bring it to me. I paced and strutted and consulted books and Scripture.

Then I collapsed, and it was back to bed once more.

All this I remember as in a waking dream. Whenever I stopped moving, I was attacked by paralysing sorrow.

Slowly my head cleared. Then I began to be tormented by recurrent thoughts and obsessions, that in themselves became demoniac. They circled back again and again, as if to drive themselves like nails into my mind. It was in defence against them that I started to write them down, hoping that if I did so they might retreat. Perhaps the act of recording them would placate them, so they would leave me in peace.

I have kept the papers all these years. I do not know what is written on them, nor do I care to reread them. The transcribing did serve as an exorcism. I affix them here, only because I have no other suitable place to put them.

If grief is only in my mind, where does my bodily pain come from? In my chest there is a tightness, as if several men with thick arms were squeezing me, pushing my breath out. I feel as if I cannot get my breath, cannot expand my chest. My muscles do not obey. Or when they try, they are weak. I am suffocating. There has come a choking in my throat, something that constricts on its own, and aches on its own. When I cry, it vanishes. But within a few moments it is back again. Like a bear-keeper, it keeps me chained by a short leash.

I have dreaded going into certain rooms, passing by certain things we looked at together, as if it would be too painful. But when it happens —by accident, or necessity—Ihave been surprised to find it does not hurt, not any more than her absence hurts anywhere else. I feel her absence no more keenly when looking at a beehive than when looking at a book she had never seen. Why is that?

I want Jane back. I would settle for only one minute with her. I would settle for only one question to ask her. I would settle for the chance to say only one sentence to her. Only one!

I see her everywhere. I see bits and pieces of her: in one woman’s way of straightening her necklace, in another’s timbre of voice, in yet another’s profile. As if she were a mirror, broken, and the shards lay everywhere, in the most unexpected places.

I have been blaming God. But how much of it was my fault? The rumours that she took ill on account of bad handling . . . I am beginning to believe them myself. If only I had not forced her to participate in the night ceremony after the christening. If only I had let her rest.... The quails. Why did I indulge her fancies and let her eat so many? It was injurious to her health.... And then, the infinity of smaller things in which I might have unwittingly contributed to her death. Every day I find more of them....

I remember once someone said to me, describing his wife’s death: ̶ehold my misery, made visible by these repulsive black hangings. God had robbed me of Jane, now I would rob Him of myself.

I’ll serve another master, I threatened Him. In all the legends, this would have been sufficient to have called forth the Dark Presence. At