“But I didn’t know!”

He does not even hear me. “But there is worse. The duchess has put a great army at their disposal and someone has made them a pretender.”

“Made them?” I repeat.

“Like a mummer’s dummy. They’ve made a boy.” He looks at my aghast face. “She’s got herself a boy.”

“A boy?”

“A boy of the right age, and the right looks. A boy that can serve.”

“Serve as what?”

“A York heir.”

I can feel myself grow weak at the knees. I steady myself on the stone windowsill and feel the chill under the palm of my sweating hand. “Who? What boy?”

He comes behind me as if he wants to hold me with love. He wraps his arms around my waist and holds me close, my back pressed to him, bending his head to whisper against my hair as if he would inhale the smell of treason on my breath. “A boy who calls himself Richard. A boy who says he is your missing brother: Richard of York.”

My knees give way and he holds me up for a moment and then lifts me like a lover, but dumps me, ungently, on the bed. “It’s not possible,” I stammer, struggling to sit upright. “How is it possible?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know, you little traitor!” He explodes into one of his sudden rages. “Don’t look at me with your beautiful innocent face and tell me you knew nothing of this. Don’t look at me with those clear eyes and lie to me from that pretty mouth. When I look at you I think that you must be an honorable woman, I think that no one as beautiful as a saint could be such a spy. D’you really expect me to believe that your mother didn’t tell you? That you don’t know?”

“Know what? I don’t know anything,” I say urgently. “I swear that I know nothing.”

“Anyway, he’s changed his tune.” Henry abruptly drops into a chair by the fireside and puts his hand to shade his eyes. He looks exhausted by his own outburst. “He was your brother Richard only for a few days. Now he says he’s Edward. It’s like being challenged by a shape-shifter. Who is he anyway?”

I have a sudden pang of wild hope. “Edward? Edward, my brother? Edward, Prince of Wales?”

“No. Edward of Warwick, your cousin. It’s a pity you have such a big family.”

My head swims, and for a moment I close my eyes and take a breath. When I look up I see he is watching me, as if he would read every secret that I know, by staring at my face.

“You think that Edward your brother is alive!” he accuses me, his voice hard with suspicion. “All this time you have been hoping that he will come. When I spoke of a pretender then, you thought it might be him!”

I fold my lips together, shaking my head. “How could he be?”