Then, one evening, Henry comes to my room, not dressed for bed but in his day clothes, his lean face compressed and dark. “The Irish have run mad,” he says shortly.

I am at the window, looking out over the darkening garden to the river. Somewhere out in the darkness I can hear the loving call of a barn owl, and I am looking for the flash of a white wing. His mate hoots in reply as I turn and take in the strain in my husband’s hunched shoulders, the grayness of his face. “You look so tired,” I say. “Can’t you rest at all?”

“Tired? I am driven half to my grave by these people. What d’you think they have done now?”

I shake my head, close the shutters on the peace of the garden, and turn to him. For a moment I feel a whisper of irritation that he cannot be at peace, that we are always under siege from his fears. “Who? Who now?”

He looks at the paper in his hand. “Those I mistrusted—rightly as it turns out—and those that I had not even known about. My kingdom is cursed with English traitors. I hadn’t even thought about the Irish. I haven’t even had time to go among them and meet them; but already they are gone to the bad.”

“Who is treacherous?” I try to ask with a light voice, but I can feel my throat tightening with fear. My family have always been well loved in Ireland; it will be our friends and allies who are frightening Henry. “Who is treacherous and what are they doing?”

“Your cousin John de la Pole is false as I thought he was, though his father swore he was not. As we rode together he looked me straight in the eye and lied like a tinker. John de la Pole has done what his father swore he would not do. He went straight to the court of Margaret of York in Flanders and she is supporting him. Now he’s gone to Dublin.”

“Dublin?”

“With Francis Lovell.”

I gasp. “Francis Lovell again?”

Henry nods grimly. “They met at the court of your aunt. All of Europe knows she will support any enemy of mine. She is determined to see York back on the throne of England and she has the command of her stepdaughter’s fortune and the friendship of half of the crowned heads of Europe. She is the most powerful woman in Christendom, a terrible enemy for me. And she has no reason! No reason to persecute me . . .”

“John did go to her, then?”

“I knew at once,” Henry said. “I have a spy in every port in England. Nobody can come or go without me knowing it within two days. I knew that his father was lying when he said he had probably run to France. I knew that your mother was lying when she said that she could not say. I knew that you were lying when you said you did not know.”