“Can it be true? Amy Dudley is enceinte?” Then a voice, quickly hushed: “I thought she was barren.”

Ah, my sister-in-law Anne Seymour, so loud and tactless, articulating what everyone else was thinking. Anne had grown sourer still with the death of her father and I supposed that was no surprise, for who would wish to be trapped in a marriage to the son of their father’s murderer? It was a harsh world we inhabited for all that it was dressed up in silks and gaudy colours.

I swallowed the bitterness of Anne’s words. She had no children herself so perhaps like me she was driven by envy. Yet how little time it had taken the whole court to condemn me because I had failed to perform a woman’s natural function, a woman’s only important function, and fall pregnant. Robert, even now demonstrating his virility in the lists, was surely as fecund as the stallion he was riding. Thus ran the logic. If there was no child then it must be my fault.

Even as I rested my hands demurely over my stomach, I knew this could only end in more disappointment, more disapproval. Yet still I said nothing, sitting in the dusty June heat, dreaming, as though that would make it true.

It was not long, of course, before everyone knew there could be no child. The year slid into autumn and then into winter and I did not increase. I felt a curious sense of disappointment and loss, as though I had almost convinced myself of the lie along with everyone else. I grieved for the child I was not carrying and the canker of doubt, of a belief in my barrenness burrowed a little deeper into my heart.

Nobody mentioned that there was no babe. Indeed, I think perhaps that Robert barely noted it. He was too occupied with other matters, not that he ever discussed them with me. I had tried to talk to Robert about affairs of state, of the court business, of politics when he attended the parliament, but he had no interest in my opinions. I quickly came to realise that he humoured me. He never sought my advice, perhaps because he was so certain of his own mind. Robert was now a gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber and his father had granted him more estates in Norfolk. This made me happy, though less so when I discovered we were not to go there. I missed the landscape of my childhood and I missed Arthur very much too, but Robert shook his head when I bearded him in his study and begged to go home again.

“It is more important to be at court now than buried away in the country,” he said. “All the things that matter happen here.”

“Then what are our manors for?” I felt frustrated. “If not to be lived in?”

Robert laughed though I glimpsed irritation in his eyes. “You are such an innocent, Amy,” he said. “Owning land is always about power and money.”