PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SPRING 1488

My uncle Edward comes home from the crusades as brown as a Moor himself, but missing all his front teeth. He’s cheerful about this and says that God can now see more clearly into his heart, but it gives him a lisp that I cannot help but find comical. I am so pleased to see him that I fall into his arms and hear him sweetly lisp over my head, “Bleth you, bleth you!” and this makes me laugh and cry at once.

I expect him to be appalled at the news that his sister is enclosed at Bermondsey, but his shrug and smile tell me that he sees this as a temporary setback in a life which has been filled with defeats and victories. “Is she comfortable?” he asks, as if it is the only question.

“Yes, she has lovely rooms and she’s well served. Clearly, they all adore her,” I reply. “Grace is with her, and the porteress calls her ‘the queen’ as if nothing had changed.”

“Then she will no doubt organize her life just as she wants,” he says. “She usually does.”

He is full of news of the crusade in Granada, of the beauty and elegance of the Moorish empire, of the determination of the Christian kings to drive the Moors completely from Spain. And he tells me stories about the Portuguese court, and their adventures. They are exploring far south down the coast of Afric, and he says there are mines of gold there, and markets full of spices, and a treasure house of ivory to be picked up by anyone who dares to go far enough as the sky gets hotter and the seas more stormy. There is a kingdom where the fields are made of gold and any man can have a fortune if he picks up the pebbles. There are strange animals and rare beasts—he has seen the hides, spotted and striped and gold as a noble—and perhaps there is a place ruled by a white Christian in the very heart of the great land, perhaps there is a kingdom of black men, devoted to a white Christian hero called Prester John.

Henry has no interest in news of magical kingdoms, but he takes Uncle Edward into his privy chamber the minute he arrives and they are locked together for half a day before Edward comes out with his toothless grin and Henry’s arm around his shoulders and I know that whatever he has reported, it has set Henry’s anxious mind at rest.

Henry trusts him so much that he is to lead a defense of Brittany. “When will you go?” I ask him.

“Almost at once,” he says. “There’s no time to lose and—” he grins his toothless smile “—I like to be busy.”

I take him immediately to the nursery at Eltham Palace to show him how much Arthur has grown. He can stand up now and walk alongside a chair or a stool. His greatest pleasure is to hold my fingers and take wavering steps across the room, turn around with his little feet pigeon-toed, and forge back again. He beams when he sees me and reaches out for me. He is starting to speak, singing like a little bird, though he has no words yet, but he says “Ma,” which I take to mean me, and “Boh,” which means anything that pleases him. But he giggles when I tickle him and drops anything that he is given in the hope that someone will pick it up and return it to him, so that he can drop it again. His greatest joy is when Bridget gives him a ball to drop, and flies after it as if they were playing tennis and she has to recover it before it bounces too often; it makes him gurgle and crow to see her run. “Is he not the most beautiful boy you have ever seen?” I ask Uncle Edward, and am rewarded by his toothless beam.