The lady flirts with death

the long version

Declared a traitor, Elizabeth Tudor is imprisoned in the Tower of London. Visiting the princess secretly, her friend Simon Maldon discovers another cause for worry: his outlaw friend Peto the Pope has been arrested for a murder he swears he did not commit. As Simon frets over Elizabeth's peril and Peto's certain execution, his wife Hannah deals with her own mystery after taking in a frightened pregnant girl who she learns is not as she first seemed.