Elizabeth is to go to her wedding from our house with her father and me, and all the children except the two babies. But Richard is not yet home.

‘Where is Father?’ she asks me the day before we are due to leave. ‘You said he would be here yesterday.’

‘He will come,’ I say steadily.

‘What if he has been delayed? What if he could not get a ship? What if the seas were too rough to sail? I cannot be married without him to give me away. What if he does not get here?’

I put my hand on my wedding ring, as if to touch his fingers that placed it there. ‘He will be here,’ I say. ‘Elizabeth, in all the years that I have loved him, he has never failed me. He will be here.’

She frets all the day and I send her to bed that night with a tisane of valerian, and when I peep into her room she is fast asleep in her bed, her hair plaited under her nightcap, seeming as young as her sister Anne, who shares the bed with her. Then I hear the noise of horses in the stable yard and look from her window, and there is the Rivers staence and a, and there is my husband, heaving himself wearily from his horse, and in a moment I am down the stairs and out through the stable door and in his arms.

He holds me so tightly that I can hardly breathe, and then he turns my face up to his and kisses me.

‘I daresay I stink,’ is the first thing he says when he gets his breath. ‘You must forgive me. The tide was against us and so I have ridden hard to get here tonight. You knew I would not fail you, didn’t you?’

I smile up at his handsome well-worn well-loved face: the man I have adored for so many years. ‘I knew you would not fail me.’

* * *

The Greys have a small chapel at their house, opposite the great hall, where the young couple exchange the vows which are solemnly witnessed by both sets of parents and the brothers and sisters. Our family fills up the chapel. I can see Lady Grey look at the ranks of my children and think that her son is marrying fertile stock. After the wedding we walk through the cloister to the hall, and there is a feast and singing and dancing, and then we prepare them for bed.

Elizabeth and I are alone in the bedroom that is going to be hers. It is a beautiful room, looking north over the pleasure grounds, towards the meadows and the river. I am feeling tenderhearted, this is my girl, the first child of mine to marry and leave her home. ‘What do you foresee for me, Lady Mother?’ she asks.

This is a question I have been dreading. ‘You know I don’t foresee any more,’ I say. ‘That was something in my girlhood. They don’t like such things in England and I have put it aside. If it comes to me or to you it is without our bidding. Your father does not like it.’