“They will bring out the real prince?” It is what he said. It is what he himself said. “The real prince?”

He doesn’t even answer me, his mouth twisted in a sort of snarl, as if he has no means to explain what he has just said.

We fall silent for a moment.

“What will you do?” It comes out as a whisper.

“I shall have to muster all the troops I can, and get ready for another battle,” he says bitterly. “I thought I had won this country but—rather like being married to you, perhaps—a man can never be quite sure that the job is done. I won a great battle and was crowned king here, and now they have crowned another and I have to fight again. It seems I can be sure of nothing in this country of mists and cousins.”

“And what will they do?” I whisper.

He looks at me as if he hates me, me and all of my unreliable family. “When they win, they’ll change boys.”

“Change boys?”

“This pretender will slip away, and a real boy will take his place, step up to the throne. A boy who is safe in hiding now, biding his time, waiting to be embodied.”

“Embodied?”

“Out of thin air. Back from the dead.”

“Who?”

Spitefully, he mimicks my horrified whisper, “Who?” and goes to the door of my room. “Who d’you think? Or should that be, who do you know?” When I say nothing he laughs shortly, with no humor. “So I will bid you farewell now, my beautiful wife, and hope that I will return to your warm bed as King of England.”

“What else?” I ask stupidly. “What else could you be?”

“Dead, I suppose,” he says bleakly.

I slide off the bed and step towards him, stretching out my hands. He takes them but does not draw me close. He holds me at arm’s length and scrutinizes my face for deceit.

“D’you think the duchess has your brother Richard in hiding?” he asks me, matter-of-factly, as if it is a question of mild interest. “The trophy of a long plot between her and your mother? D’you think your mother sent him to her the moment that he was in danger, and sent a pretend prince into the Tower? D’you think he has been there for these four years? A pretender waiting for the battle to be fought for him, before he springs out, triumphant? Like Jesus from the tomb? Naked but for his winding sheet and his vanquished wounds? Triumphing over death and then me?”

I can’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know anything. Before God, Henry—”

He checks me. “Don’t be forsworn,” he says. “I have men swearing lies to me ten times a day. All I wanted from you was the simple truth.”

I stand before him in silence, and he nods as if he knows there can never be a simple truth between us, and he goes out.