he king. & wonder what it will be,’ she says idly. ‘Do you think a boy?’

‘Shall I get the cards?’ I ask, ready to indulge her.

She turns her head away. ‘No,’ she says, surprising me. ‘And don’t you think about it, Jacquetta.’

I laugh. ‘I am bound to think about it. This is your first baby; if it is a boy, he will be the next King of England. I am honour-bound to think of him, and I would think of him anyway for love of you.’

Gently, she puts a finger over my lips, to silence me. ‘Don’t think too much then.’

‘Too much?’

‘Don’t think about him with the Sight,’ she says. ‘I want him to bloom like a flower, unobserved.’

For a moment I think that she is afraid of some old horrible hedge-witchery, casting the evil eye or ill-wishing. ‘You cannot think that I would do anything to harm him. Just thinking about him would not harm . . .’

‘Oh, no.’ She shakes her golden head. ‘No, dear Jacquetta, I don’t think that. It’s just that . . . I don’t want you to know everything . . . not everything. Some things are private.’ She blushes and turns her face away from me. ‘I don’t want you to know everything.’

I think I understand. Who knows what she had to do to gain the interest of such a cool husband? Who knows how seductive she must have been to get him off his knees and into her bed? Did she have to try sluts’ tricks that left her feeling ashamed of herself? ‘Whatever you did to conceive this child, it is worth it,’ I say stoutly. ‘You had to conceive a child and if you have made a son it is all the better. Don’t think badly of yourself, Margaret, and I will think of nothing at all.’

She looks up. ‘Do you think that nothing would be a sin that gave England an heir?’

‘It was a sin for love,’ I say. ‘And hurt no-one. Then it’s forgivable.’

‘I don’t need to confess it?’

I think of Bishop Ayscough who told the young king not to bed his wife in the first week for fear that the young couple would experience the sin of lust. ‘You needn’t confess anything you did to get this child. It had to be done, and it was an act of love, and men don’t understand such things. Priests the least of all.’

She gives a little sigh. ‘All right. And don’t you think about it.’

I wave my hand like a veil over my face. ‘I won’t think. I have not a thought in my head.’

She laughs. ‘I know you can’t stop yourself thinking, I know that. And I know you have the Sight sometimes. But don’t look for this baby, promise me you will not look for him? And think of him as a wild flower which grows and is a thing of beauty; but nobody knows how it was planted nor how it came to be there.’