“The heat of the battle . . .” The man shrugs. “It’s harder to capture a man than to kill him. It was a close thing. Even though we outnumbered them by so many, it was a very close thing. They fought like men possessed. They were ready to die for their cause and we were—”

“You were what?” I ask curiously.

“We did as we were ordered,” he says carefully. “We did enough. We did the job.”

I pause at that. I have heard reports from many battles, though none in which the victory was described so calmly. But then I have never heard a report from a battle where the chief commander, the king himself, sat at the rear of his army, an army twice the size of his enemy, and refused to parlay with defeated men but let them be slaughtered like dumb cattle.

“But they’re dead,” My Lady says to comfort herself. “And my son is alive.”

“He’s well. Not a scratch on him. How could they touch him? He was so far back they couldn’t see him!”

“You can dine in the hall,” My Lady rules, “and this is for you.” I see a piece of gold pass from her hand to his. She must be grateful for the good news to pay so highly for it. She turns to me. “So it is over.”

“Praise be to God,” I say devoutly.

She nods. “His will be done,” she says, and I know that this victory will make her more certain than ever that her son was born to be king.

LINCOLN CASTLE, LINCOLN, JULY 1487

The king commands that we meet him at Lincoln and he and I go hand in hand into the great cathedral for a service of thanksgiving. Behind us, half a step behind, wearing a coronal, like a queen herself, comes My Lady the King’s Mother and either side of her are the king’s commanders, his uncle Jasper Tudor, who planned the battle, and his most loyal friend, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, whose men took the brunt of the fighting.

The archbishop, John Morton, is trembling at the nearness of the escape, his face flushed, his hands shaking as he distributes the Host. My Lady is in floods of tears of joy. Henry himself is profoundly moved, as if this is his first victory, fought all over again. Winning this means more to him than winning at Bosworth; it doubles his confidence.

“I am relieved,” he says to me when we are in our private room at the end of the day. “I cannot easily say how deeply I am relieved.”

“Because you won?” I ask. I am sitting at the window, looking east where the high spires of the cathedral pierce the low cloudy skies, but as he comes in my room I turn and look at his flushed complexion.

“Not just that,” he says. “Once I knew that we outnumbered them I thought we were almost certain to win, and the Irish were practically unarmed—when they turned and faced us they were all but naked. I knew they couldn’t stand against archery—they had no shields, they had no padded jackets, nobody had chain mail, poor fools—no, what made it so wonderful was capturing the boy.”