My Darling Jane

It is a bleak February morning. Jane Grey, of Bradgate Park, Leicester, not long sixteen but hardly more than a child, faces the block. Those who have used her in their power-games, not least her parents, have disowned her. One who has witnessed her suffering at such cruel hands and has accompanied her on that tortuous journey from birth to the scaffold, Nurse Ellen, stands weeping as Jane says her final prayers. Ellen, her true mother, knows all her secrets, doubts and fears. She has stood near her in the presence of all the royals - the king, his final queen, his two disowned princesses - and his only son whose untimely death has precipitated Jane's execution. Ellen seethes with fury that her innocent darling must pay the penalty, like her Saviour, for the sins of others. To whom might she tell the full story - not least, of her genius? Arrested on suspicion of listening to a heretic preacher, Ellen is threatened by a priest with the agony of Bloody Mary's fires, but when she tells him whose nurse she was, he decides to spare her if she will tell tell him all she knows of Jane Grey. And so the story can begin - of a girl who would have been the greatest Queen - the Scholar-Queen - of England.