‘I have some well-known herbs,’ I say carefully. ‘Will you come and lie down for a little while, Your Grace?’

‘Yes,’ Margaret says and lets me lead her away from the duke to the seclusion of her rooms.

I make her a tisane of Tipton’s weed, and she hesitates before she drinks it. ‘It will not hurt a baby?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘It is very mild. You shall have a draught of it every morning for a week. Grief would be worse for a baby; you have to try to be calm and cheerful.’

She nods.

‘And you are sure?’ I ask her quietly. ‘The midwives told me that they were almost certain?’

‘I am certain,’ she says. ‘I will tell the king next week, when I miss my course again.’

* * *

But she does not tell him herself. Oddly, she summons his chamberlain.

‘I have a message for you to take to the king,’ she says. She is sombre in her dark blue mourning clothes, and I am sorry that the loss of her mother has taken the brightness from her joy. Still, when she tells the king they will both be elated. I assume she is going to invite the king to come to her rooms. But she goes on: ‘Pray give my compliments to the king and my good wishes, and inform him that I am with child.’

Richard Tunstall simply goggles at her: he has never been asked to take such a message in his life. No royal chamberlain ever has. He looks at me, as if for advice, but I can do nothing but show, by a little shrug, that he had better take the message that this queen wishes to send to her husband.

He bows and steps backwards out of the room, and the guards close the door quietly behind him.

‘I’ll change my gown, the king is certain to come to me,’ she says.

We hurry to her room and change her from her dark blue gown to one of pale green, a good colour for spring. As her maid holds the dress out for her to step into, I can see that she has a rounded belly where she was once so spare, and her breasts fill the fine linen shift. I smile at the sight of her.

We wait for the king to come bursting in, his face alight with joy, his hands held out to her, we wait for an hour. We hear the watchman giving the time, and then finally we hear the footsteps outside and the guards throw open the doors to the queen’s apartments. We all rise to our feet, expecting to see the king rush in, his boyish face beaming. But it is Richard Tunstall again, the king’s chamberlain, with a reply to the queen’s message.

‘His Grace bid me tell you this: that the news is to our most singular consolation and to all true liege people’s great joy and comfort,’ he says. He gulps and looks at me.