The queen finds her confinement tedious, and the daily reports from Windsor Castle only make the days worse. They are torturing the king with one remedy after another. The reports speak of draining him of cool fluids, and heating of his vital parts, and I know that they mean cupping him to draw off his blood and then burning him where he lies, silent as a crucified Christ, waiting to rise again. Some nights I get up from the little bed that I have in the queen’s room and pull up the corner of the tapestry over the window; so that I can see the moon, a big warm harvest moon, so near to earth that I can see every wrinkle and pockmark on her face, and I ask her, ‘Did I bewitch the king? Did I ill-wish him? In that moment of fright when I bade him see nothing did I, in truth, make him blind? Could such a thing be? Could I be so powerful? And if it was me – how can I take the words back and restore him?’

I feel very alone with this worry. Of course I cannot share it with the queen who has her own guilt and fear. I dare write nothing to Richard; such thoughts should not be in my mind, never on paper. I am sick and tired of being trapped in these shadowy rooms: the queen’s confinement is long and anxious for us all. This should be the happiest autumn of her life, with a baby on the way at last; but instead we are all filled with fear about the king, and now some of the ladies are whispering that the baby will be born asleep too.

When I hear this I go down to the river and sit on the pier as the sun is setting and look over the swiftly moving water that flows towards the sea, and I whisper to Melusina that if I ever said a word that wished the king blinded, I take back that word now. If I ever had a thought that he should see nothing, then I deny that thought now, and I wish with all my heart that the baby born to the queen will be well and healthy and live long and happy. I go slowly back to the palace not knowing ithe river has heard my wishes, or if the river can do anything anyway, or if the moon can understand how desolate a mere woman can feel, far from her husband and in a world that is filled with danger.

I walk in to a hushed bustle. ‘Her waters have broken,’ a maid hisses, running past me with some clean linen.

I hurry into the bedroom. The midwives are here already, the rockers are making up the cradle with clean sheets and the softest blanket, the mistress of the bedchamber is heating a poker to mull the special birthing ale, and the queen herself is standing at the foot of the best bed, bent over, holding the bedpost, sweat on her white face, gripping her lower lip in her teeth. I go straight to her. ‘The pain passes,’ I say. ‘Moment by moment, it comes and it goes away again. You have to be brave.’