“Where to?” she asks.

I realize, as I tell her, that she will use this information. She will write to rebels as they muster, to enemies in England and overseas. As soon as I tell her so much as one word, that means I am working for York; I am spying for York against my own husband.

“Norwich,” I say tightly. “We’re going for Corpus Christi. Should I expect an attack now I’ve told you that?”

“Ah, so he thinks we’re invading the east coast,” she says gleefully. “So that’s what he’s expecting.”

“What?”

“He’s not going to Norwich for the pleasure of the feast. He’s going so that he can prepare the east coast for invasion.”

“They will invade? From Flanders?”

She puts a kiss on my forehead, completely ignoring my fearful questions. “Now don’t you worry about it,” she says. “You don’t need to know.”

She walks with me to the gatehouse, and then round the outside walls to where the pier runs out into the Neckinger River and my boat is waiting, bobbing on the rising tide. She kisses me and I kneel for her blessing and feel her warm hand rest gently on my hood. “God bless you,” she says sweetly. “Come and see me when you return from Norwich, if you are able to come, if you are allowed.”

“I’m going to be alone at court without you,” I remind her. “I have Cecily and I have Anne, and Maggie, but I feel alone without you. My little sisters miss you too. And My Lady the King’s Mother thinks I am plotting with you and my husband doubts me. And I have to live there, with them, all of them, being watched by them all the time, without you.”

“Not for long,” she says, her buoyant confidence unchanged. “And very soon you will come to me or—who knows—I will find a way to come to you.”

We get back to Richmond on the inflowing tide and as soon as we round the bend in the river I can see a tall slight figure waiting on the landing stage. It is the king. It is Henry. I recognize him from far away, and I don’t know whether to tell the wherry to just turn around and row away, or to go on. I should have known that he would know where I was. My uncle Edward warned me that this is a king who knows everything. I should have known that he would not accept the lie of illness without questioning my cousin Margaret, and demanding to see me.

His mother is not at his side, nor any of his court. He is standing alone like an anxious husband, not like a suspicious king. As the little boat nudges up against the wooden pilings and my groom jumps ashore, Henry puts him to one side and helps me out of the boat himself. He throws a coin to the boatman, who rings it against his teeth as if surprised to find that it is good, and then disappears into the mist of the twilight river.