He looks as if he is being harried beyond bearing. “I don’t know what to fear,” he says. “Your aunt the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy is raising an army, a great army against me, I know that much.”

“She is?”

He nods. “And your mother was raising rebels at home. Today I had my council here. I’m in command of the lords, I’m sure of that. At any rate . . . they all swore fealty. But who can I trust if your mother and your aunt put an army in the field, and at the head of it is—” He breaks off.

“Is who?” I ask. “Who do you fear might lead such an invasion?”

He looks away from me. “I think you know.”

I cross the room and take his hand, horrified. “Truly, I don’t know.”

He holds my hand very tightly and stares into my eyes as if trying to read my thoughts, as if he wants more than anything else in the world to know he can trust me, his wife and the mother of his child.

“Do you think John de la Pole would turn his coat and lead the army against you?” I ask, naming my own cousin, Richard’s heir. “Is it him you fear?”

“Do you know anything against him?”

I shake my head. “Nothing, I swear.”

“Worse than him,” he says shortly.

I stand before him in silence, wondering if he will name the enemy that he fears the most: the figurehead who would be more potent than a York cousin.

“Who?” I whisper.

But it is as if the ghost has entered our private room, the ghost that everyone speaks of, but no one dares to name. Superstitiously, Henry will not name him either.

“I’m ready for him,” is all he says. “Whoever it is that she has to head her army. You can tell everyone that I am ready for him.”

“Who?” I dare him to speak.

But Henry just shakes his head.

And then, the very next morning, John de la Pole is missing from the chapel at the service of Lauds. I glance down from my raised seat in the gallery and notice that his usual place is empty. He is missing at dinnertime too.

“Where is my cousin John?” I ask My Lady the King’s Mother as we wait after dinner for the priest to finish the long reading that she has commanded for all the days of Lent.

She looks at me as if I have insulted her. “You ask me?” she says.

“I ask you where is my cousin John?” I repeat, thinking that she has not heard me. “He was not at chapel this morning, and I haven’t seen him all day.”

“You should perhaps ask your mother, rather than me,” she says bitterly. “She may know. You should perhaps ask your aunt Elizabeth of York, his mother—she may know. You should ask your aunt Margaret of York, the false Dowager Duchess of Burgundy: she certainly knows, for he is on his way to her.”