We are standing in the stable yard, and around us is the usual buzz of conversation, the horses led out of their stalls by the grooms, the ladies lifted into the saddles, the gentlemen standing by their stirrups, passing up a glass of wine, holding a glove, talking, courting, enjoying the sunshine. We should be happy, with three children in the nursery and a loyal court around us.

“Of course, France is always our enemy,” I reply comfortingly. “As you say. And we have always resisted an invasion, and we have always won. Perhaps because you were in Brittany for all that long time, you learned to fear them overmuch? For look—you have your spies and your reporters, your posts to bring you news, and your lords who are ready to arm in an instant. We must be the greater power. We have the narrow seas between them and us. Even if they are in Ireland they cannot be a serious danger to us. You can feel safe now, can’t you, my lord?”

“Don’t ask me, ask your mother!” he exclaims, gripped with one of his sudden furies. “You ask your mother if I can feel safe now. And tell me what she says.”

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, SEPTEMBER 1491

Henry comes to my rooms with his court before dinner and takes me to a window bay, out of the way of everyone. Cecily, my sister, newly returned to court after the birth of her second daughter, raises an eyebrow at Henry’s warm embrace of me and his publicly seeking to be alone with me. I smile at her taking notice.

“I want to talk to you,” he says.

I incline my head towards him and feel him draw me closer.

“We think it is time that your cousin Margaret was married.”

I cannot stop myself glancing over towards her. She is hand in hand with My Lady the King’s Mother, who is speaking earnestly to her. “It looks like more than a thought, it looks like a decision,” I observe.

His smile is boyish, guilty. “It is my mother’s idea,” he admits. “But I think it is a good match for her, and truly—sweetheart—she has to be settled with a man we can trust. Her name, and the presence of her brother, mean that she will always live uneasily under our rule. But we can change her name at least.”

“Who have you picked out for her?” I ask. “For Henry, I warn you, I love her like a sister, I don’t want her sent away to Scotland or”—I am suddenly suspicious—“bundled off to Brittany, or to France to make a treaty.”

He laughs. “No, no, everyone knows that she’s not a princess of York like you or your sisters. Everyone knows that her husband must keep her safe and out of the way. She can’t be powerful, she can’t be visible, she must be kept quietly inside our house so that no one thinks she will support another.”