This is the right answer. He gestures that I am to come to bed beside him, and I kneel briefly before my prie-dieu, then take off my robe and slip between the sheets in my nightgown. Wordlessly, he tweaks at the fine lawn of my gown and gestures that I should straddle him. I make sure that I am smiling as I go astride him, and I lower myself gently onto him. There is nothing there. Feeling a little foolish I glance down to make sure that I am in the right place, but I can feel nothing. I make sure that my smile does not waver and, slowly, I undo the top ribbon of my nightgown. Always I have to balance my actions so that I do not seem wanton—like Kitty Howard—but I do enough to please him. He gets hold of my hips in an unkind grip and draws me downwards, grinding me against him, trying to thrust himself upwards. His legs are too weak to take his weight, he cannot arch his back, he can do nothing but flounder. I can see his color and his temper rising, and I make sure I am still smiling. I widen my eyes and I take little shallow breaths as if I am aroused. I start to pant.

“It’s no good,” he says shortly.

I pause, uncertainly.

“It’s not my fault,” he insists. “It’s this fever. It has unmanned me.”

I dismount with as much ease as I can manage, but I feel painfully awkward as if I were getting gracelessly off a fat cob. “I am sure it’s nothing...”

“Yes, yes,” he says. “It’s the fault of that damned doctor. The physic he gives me would castrate a horse.”

I giggle at the phrase, then I see his face and realize he is not joking. He really does think himself as strong as a stallion, only rendered impotent by a draft against fever.

“Get us something to eat,” he says. “At least we can dine.”

I slip from the bed and go to the cupboard. There are pastries and some fruit.

“For God’s sake! More than that.”

I ring the bell and Elizabeth Tyrwhit my cousin comes and curtseys low when she sees the king in my bed. “Your Majesty,” she says.

“The king is hungry,” I tell her. “Bring us some pastries and some wine, some meats and some cheeses and some sweet things.”

She bows and goes, I hear her waking a page and sending him running to the kitchens. One of the cooks has to sleep there, in a truckle bed, waiting for a nighttime demand from the king’s rooms. The king likes great meals in the middle of the night as well as the two big regular feasts of the day, and often stirs in his rest and wants a pudding to soothe him back to sleep again.