“I don’t know, I don’t know!” I am crying now, I can hardly speak. I can hardly hear her through my sobs.

“Well, who is it?” she suddenly shouts, flashing out into rage. “Who else could it be? Who could she put above her own grandson? Who can she prefer to our Prince Arthur? Arthur that was born at Winchester, Arthur of Camelot? Who can she prefer to him?”

Dumbly, I shake my head. I can feel the hot tears pooling in my icy hands and making my face wet.

“She would throw you down for no one else,” Lady Margaret whispers. “Of course it is one of the boys. Tell me, Elizabeth. Tell me all that you know so that we can make your son, Arthur, safe in his inheritance. Does your mother have one of her boys hidden somewhere? Is he with your aunt in Flanders?”

“I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “She would never tell me anything. I said I don’t know, and truly, I don’t know. She made sure that there was never anything that I could tell you. She did not want me ever to have an inquisition like this. She tried to protect me from it, so I don’t know.”

Henry comes to my rooms with his court before dinner, a tight, unconvincing smile on his face, playing the part of a king, trying to hide his fear that he is losing everything.

“I’ll talk with you later,” he says in a hard undertone. “When I come to your room tonight.”

“My lord . . .” I whisper.

“Not now,” he says firmly. “Everyone needs to see that we are united, that we are as one.”

“My mother cannot be held against her will,” I stipulate. I think of my cousin in the Tower, my mother in Bermondsey Abbey. “I cannot tolerate my family being held. Whatever you suspect. I will not bear it.”

“Tonight,” he says. “When I come to your rooms. I’ll explain.”

My cousin Maggie gives me one single aghast look and then comes behind me, picks up my train, and straightens it out as my husband takes my hand and leads me into dinner before the court, and I smile, as I must do, to the left and to the right, and wonder what my mother will have for her dinner tonight, while the court, that once was her court, is merry.

At least Henry comes to me promptly, straight after chapel, dressed for bed, and the lords who escort him to my bedroom quickly withdraw to leave us alone, and my cousin Maggie waits only to see if there is anything that we need, and then she goes too, with one wide-eyed glance at me, as if she fears that next morning I will have disappeared as well.

“I don’t mean your mother to be enclosed,” Henry says briskly. “And I won’t put her on trial if I can avoid it.”