“Except that you don’t know where he is,” I say. “He’s probably run away to France.”

“At least I was married,” she says pointedly. “I didn’t bed a man married to someone else. I was not a scarlet adulteress. And at least he’s not dead.”

“Ralph Scrope of Upsall,” I reply scathingly. “Mr. Nobody of Nowhere. If you can find him, if he is still alive, you can live with him, for all I care. If he’ll have you without being told to do so. If he’ll be your husband without a royal command.”

She hunches her shoulder and turns away from me. “My Lady the King’s Mother will provide for me,” she says defensively. “I am her goddaughter. It is she who matters, who commands everything now. She will remember me.”

The weather is all wrong for the time of year, too sunny, too bright, too hot during the day and humid at night, so nobody can sleep. Nobody but me. Although I am cursed by dreams, I still cannot stop myself sleeping. I drop into darkness every night and dream that Richard has come to me, laughing. He tells me that the battle went his way and we are to be married. He holds my hands as I protest that they came and told me that Henry had won, and he kisses me and calls me a fool, a little darling fool. I wake believing it to be true, and feel a sudden sick realization when I look at the walls of the second-best bedroom, and Cecily sharing my bed, and remember that my love lies dead and cold in an unmarked grave, while his country sweats in the heat.

My maid, Jennie, who comes from a family of merchants in the City, tells me that there is terrible sickness in the crowded houses of the inner city. Then she tells me that two of her father’s apprentices have fallen sick and died.

“The plague?” I ask. At once, I step back a little from her. There is no cure for the disease and I am afraid that she carries the illness with her and the hot plague wind will blow over me and my family.

“It’s worse than the plague,” she says. “It’s not like anything anyone has seen before. Will, the first apprentice, said at breakfast that he was cold and that he ached as if he had been fighting with a singlestick all the night. My father said he could go back to his bed, and then he started to sweat; his shirt was wet with sweat, he was dripping with it. When my mother took him a pot of ale he said he was burning up and couldn’t get cool. He said he would sleep and then he didn’t waken. A young man of eighteen! Dead in an afternoon!”

“His skin?” I ask. “Did he have boils?”

“No boils, no rash,” she insists. “As I say—it’s not the plague. It’s this new illness. They call it the sweating sickness, a new plague that King Henry has brought upon us. Everyone says that his reign has started with death and won’t last. He has brought death with him. We’ll all die of his ambition. They say that he came in with sweat and will labor to keep his throne. It’s a Tudor illness, he brought it in with him. He’s cursed, everyone says so. It’s autumn but it’s as hot as midsummer, and we’re all going to sweat to death.”