PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SPRING 1487

But not even the evidence of their own eyes convinces people who are determined to believe the opposite. Only days after our walk through the streets of London, with the boy smiling in our midst, there are people swearing that Edward of Warwick escaped from the Tower while walking to church and is hiding in York, biding his time to come against the tyrant of the red dragon, the pretender to the throne, Henry the usurper, the false claimant.

We move out of the city to the Palace of Sheen, but Edward cannot be released from his rooms in the Tower to come too. “How can I take him with us?” Henry demands of me. “Can you doubt for a moment that if he was outside the safety of those walls then someone would get hold of him and next thing we would hear of him would be at the head of an army?”

“He would not!” I say despairingly. I begin to think that my husband will hold my little cousin in prison for life, he is so overly cautious. “You know Edward would not run away from us to lead an army! All he wants is to be in the schoolroom doing his lessons again. All he wants is to be allowed to ride out. All he wants is to be with his sister.”

But Henry looks at me with hard eyes as dark as Welsh coal, and says: “Of course he would lead an army. Anybody would. And besides, they might not give him any choice.”

“He’s twelve!” I exclaim. “He’s a child!”

“He’s old enough to sit on a horse while an army fights for him.”

“This is my cousin,” I say. “This is my own cousin, the son of my father’s brother. Please, be kingly, and release him.”

“You think he should be released because he is the son of your father’s brother? You think your family were so kindly when they had power? Elizabeth, your father held his own brother, Edward’s father, in the Tower and then executed him for treason! Your cousin Edward is the son of a traitor and a rebel, and the traitors shout his name when they muster against me. He won’t come out of the Tower until I know that we are safe, all four of us, my mother, you and me, and the true heir: Prince Arthur.”

He stamps to the door and turns to glower at me. “Don’t ask me again,” he orders. “Don’t dare to ask me again. You don’t know how much I do for love of you, already. More than I should. Far more than I should.”

He slams the door behind him and I hear the rattle as the guards hastily present arms as he marches by.

“How much do you do?” I ask the polished wood panels of the door. “And for love?”