She flings up her head at the implied rebuke. ‘If the king favours one man over his closest kin, his true friends and best advisors, there is always going to be trouble,’ she says hotly.

I raise my hand. ‘Forgive me,’ I say. ‘I did not mean to suggest that your tenants are exceptionally unruly, or your father’s family, the Nevilles, make exceptionally irritable neighbours in the north of England. I meant only that the king has worked hard to see that his rule runs through all England. When the duke your husband comes to council I am sure he will be able to reassure his peers that there is no hint of rebellion anywhere on his lands, and that his kinsmen, your family, can learn to live in peace with the Percys in the north.’

She folds her lips on an angry reply. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘We all want only to serve and support the king. And the north cannot be divided.’

I smile at her boy. ‘And what do you hope to do when you are grown, Edward?’ I ask. ‘Will you be a great general like your father? Or is it the Church for you?’

He ducks his head. ‘One day I shall be head of the House of York,’ he says shyly to his shoes. ‘It is my duty to be ready to serve my house and my country however I am needed, when my time comes.’

* * *

We have an impressive christening for the royal baby. The queen herself orders a cloth-of-gold train for his gown that is brought from France, and costs more than the gown of his godmother, Anne the Duchess of Buckingham. The other godparents are the Archbishop of Canterbury and Edmund Beaufort the Duke of Somerset.

‘Is that wise?’ I ask her quietly as she tells her confessor the names of the godparents she has chosen. She is on her knees before the little altar in her privy chamber, I am kneeling beside her, the priest behind the screen. Nobody can hear my urgent murmur.

She does not turn her head from her clasped hands. ‘I would have no-one else,’ she whispers. ‘The duke shall care for him and protect him as if he was his own.’

I shake my head in silence but I can see what she has done. She has surrounded her boy with the court party: people she trusts, people that Somerset has appointed, and Somerset’s kin. If the king were to never speak again she would have put a small army around her boy who should protect him.

Anne the Duchess of Buckingham carries the precious child to the font in Westminster chapel. Cecily Neville glares at me from among the ladies as if I am responsible for yet another snub to her husband, Richard, Duke of York, who should have been a godfather. Nobody remarks on the king’s absence, for a christening is the business of the godparents, and of course the queen is still in her confinement. But the secret cannot be kept forever, and the king surely cannot be ill forever? Surely he must get better soon?