BOOKS
The Testimony Of Alys Twist
I remembered it once said, when I was small, that I would go far. Whoever had spoken over my head had been right, I thought, because just twenty or so years later here I was, arriving to work at the palace, and no servant gets further than this…
1553: deeply divided England rejoices as the rightful heir, Mary Tudor, sweeps to power on a tide of populist goodwill. But the people should have been careful what they wished for: Mary’s mission is to turn back time to an England of old. Within weeks there is widespread rebellion in favour of her heir, her half-sister, princess Elizabeth, who is everything that Mary isn’t. From now on, Elizabeth will have to use her considerable guile just to stay alive.
Orphan Alys Twist has come a long way – further than she ever dared hope – to work as a laundress at the royal wardrobe. There she meets Bel, daughter of the queen’s tailor, and seems to have arrived at her own happy ending.
But in a world where appearance is everything, a laundress is in a unique position to see the truth of people’s lives, and Alys is pressed into service as a spy in the errant princess’s household. Alys herself, though, is hardly whiter than white, and when the princess is arrested she must make a dangerous choice.
A few streets away from Bel’s window, the Thames would be supine and moon-dazzled, but in the hush at Richmond I heard it churning and gurgling, working on bodies that had one way or another ended up in it, a long gut sluicing skin from bone…