My mother leads the ladies past the men-at-arms, and graciously acknowledges their salute. “You look weary,” she says pleasantly. “Come far?”

“Without stopping for sleep, all the way from Flanders,” one boasts. “We rode as if the devil was behind us.”

“Did you?”

“But he’s not behind us, he’s before us,” he confides quietly. “Ahead of us, and ahead of His Grace, and out and about raising an army while the rest of us are amazed.”

“That’s enough,” another man says. He pulls off his hat to me and to my mother. “I apologize, Your Grace. He’s been breathless for so long he has to talk now.”

My mother smiles on the man and on his captain. “Oh, that’s all right,” she says.

Within an hour the king has called a meeting of his inner council, the men he turns to when he is in danger. Jasper Tudor is there, his red head bowed, his grizzled eyebrows knitting together with worry at the threat to his nephew, to his line. The Earl of Oxford walks arm in arm with Henry, discussing mustering men, and which counties can be trusted and which must not be alarmed. John de la Pole comes into the council chamber on the heels of his fiercely loyal father, and the other friends and family follow: the Stanleys, the Courtenays, John Morton the archbishop, Reginald Bray, who is My Lady’s steward—all the men who put Henry Tudor on the throne and now find it is hard to keep him there.

I go to the nursery. I find My Lady the King’s Mother sitting in the big chair in the corner, watching the nurse changing the baby’s clout and wrapping him tight in his swaddling clothes. It is unusual for her to come here, but I see from her strained face and the beads in her hand that she is praying for his safety.

“Is it bad news?” I ask quietly.

She looks at me reproachfully, as if it is all my fault. “They say that the Duchess of Burgundy, your aunt, has found a general who will take her pay and do her bidding,” she says. “They say he is all but unbeatable.”

“A general?”

“And he is recruiting an army.”

“Will they come here?” I whisper. I look out of the window to the river and the quiet fields beyond.

“No,” she says determinedly. “For Jasper will stop them, Henry will stop them, and God Himself will stop them.”

On my way to my mother’s chambers, I hurry past the king’s rooms, but the door to the great presence chamber is still closed. He has most of the lords gathered together, and they will be frantically trying to judge what new threat this presents to the Tudor throne, how much they should fear, what they should do.

I find I am quickening my pace, my hand to my mouth. I am afraid of what is threatening us, and I am also afraid of the defense that Henry will mount against his own people that might be more violent and deadly than an actual invasion.