After a masque held for Mary exposes Courtenay’s inconstancy, the queen resolves to marry Philip of Spain, while the conspiracy engineered by the French ambassador de Noailles, Courtenay’s escape, and political intrigues surrounding Elizabeth draw the court and the Tower into an even greater struggle for power. Jane and Guilford are temporarily spared, but opposition to the Spanish marriage gathers around Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, and as Jane desperately urges her husband not to join it, armed conflict advances toward London and threatens to determine the fate of them all.