“If I’m ever made queen I will keep him safe,” I promise her, thinking how many lives depend on me to make Henry honor his betrothal. “But in the meantime, I think you can come to London with us and we will be safe with my mother. She’ll know what to do. She’ll have a plan ready.”

Maggie hesitates. There was bad blood between her mother Isabel and mine, and then she was raised by Richard’s wife Anne, who hated my mother as a mortal enemy. “Will she care for us?” she asks very quietly. “Will your mother be kind to Teddy? They always said she was my family’s enemy.”

“She has no quarrel with either you or with Edward,” I say reassuringly. “You are her niece and nephew. We’re all of the House of York. She will protect you as she does us.”

She is reassured, she trusts me, and I don’t remind her that my mother had two boys of her own, Edward and Richard, that she loved more than life itself; but she couldn’t keep them safe. And nobody knows where my little brothers are tonight.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1485

There is no welcome party as we ride into London, and when one or two apprentices and market women catch sight of us in the narrow streets and cheer for the children of York, our escort closes up around us, to drive us as fast as they can into the courtyard of the royal Palace of Westminster, where the heavy wooden gates close behind us. Clearly, the new king Henry wants no rivals for the hearts of the city that he is calling his own. My mother is on the entrance steps, before the great doors, waiting for us with my little sisters, six-year-old Catherine and four-year-old Bridget, on either side of her. I tumble down from my horse and find myself in her arms, smelling her familiar perfume of rosewater and the scent of her hair, and as she holds me and pats my back, I find myself suddenly in tears, sobbing for the loss of the man I loved so passionately, and the future I had planned with him.

“Hush,” my mother says firmly, and sends me indoors while she greets my sisters and my cousins. She comes in after me, with Bridget on one hip and Catherine holding her hand, Anne and Cecily dancing around her. She is laughing, and looks happy and far younger than her forty-eight years. She is wearing a gown of dark blue, a blue leather belt around her slim waist, and her hair tied back into a blue velvet cap. All the children are shouting with excitement as she draws us into her private rooms, and sits down with Bridget on her knee. “Now tell me everything!” she says. “Did you really ride all the way, Anne? That was very good indeed. Edward, my dear boy, are you tired? Was your pony good?”