“I gambol. I gamble away my fortune!” Will clinches the joke with a pun, making the king laugh as he drinks, so that Will thumps him familiarly on the back. “Choke up, Nuncle. Don’t cough up your own vigor!”

I smile and say nothing while the physician is measuring out the series of little drafts, but when everyone has gone from the room, I say: “My lord husband, you have not forgotten that I had no child from two previous marriages?”

“But you had precious little joy in them, didn’t you?” he asks bluntly.

I give a little embarrassed laugh. “Well, yes, I wasn’t married for my own joy.”

“Your first husband was little more than a boy, afraid to say boo to a goose, probably unmanned, and your second was a dotard, probably impotent,” the king declares inaccurately. “How should you have got a child from either of them? I have studied these things, and I know. A woman needs pleasure in order to take a child. She has to have a crisis of pleasure, just as her husband does. This is ordained by God. So at last, dearest wife, you have a chance of becoming a mother. Because I know how to please a woman till she weeps for joy, till she cries out for more.”

I am silent, remembering the involuntary cry that I used to make when Thomas was moving inside me, his breath coming fast and my pleasure mounting. Afterwards I would find that my throat was sore and I would know that I had screamed with my face against his naked chest.

“I give you my word,” the king says.

I push away my thoughts and smile at him. I know that there can be no pleasure for me in a dead woman’s bed. It can’t be possible that his damp fumblings can give me a child, and the rue should prevent a monster birth. But since two earlier wives were divorced for lack of a son I would be a fool to say that I don’t think we’ll get one—whatever sensual pleasures he promises.

Besides, oddly, I find that I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I’m not going to tell Henry that I cannot feel desire for him, not when he is smiling at me and promising me ecstasy. At the very least I owe him kindness, I can give him affection, I can show him respect.

He beckons me towards him as he sits on his great chair at the fireside. “Come and sit on my lap, dearest.”

I go readily enough and perch on the breadth of his good thigh. He puts his arms around me, he kisses my hair, he puts his hand under my chin and turns my face towards him so that he can kiss me on the mouth.