Henry whistles to his man and he comes over with a beautiful peregrine falcon, his breast like royal ermine, his back as dark as sable fur. Henry pulls on the gauntlet and takes the bird on his fist, looping the jesses around his fingers.

“They have raised up their boy,” he repeats. “Another one.”

I see the darkness in his face and I realize that this hawking trip, and the clatter of the court at play, and Henry’s new cape, and even the caress of his falcon are all part of a pretense. He is showing to the world that he is unconcerned. He is trying to look as if everything is all right. In reality, he is, as so often, embattled and afraid.

“This time, they are calling him ‘prince.’ ”

“Who is he?” I ask very quietly.

“This time I don’t know, though I have had my men up and down every corner of England and in and out of every schoolroom. I don’t think there is one missing child that I haven’t identified. But this boy . . .” He breaks off.

“How old is he?”

“Eighteen,” he says simply.

My brother Richard would be eighteen, if he were alive. I don’t remark on it. “And who is he?”

“Who does he say he is?” he corrects me, irritably. “Why, he says he is Richard, your missing brother Richard.”

“And what do people say he is?” I ask.

He sighs. “The traitorous lords, the Irish lords who would run after anything in silk . . . they say he is Prince Richard, Duke of York. And they are arming for him, and rising for him, and I shall have the whole battle of Stoke to fight all over again, with another boy at the head of another army, with French mercenaries behind him and Irish lords sworn to his service, as if ghosts never lie down but come again and again against me.”

The sun is still bright and warm but I am cold with horror.

“Not again? Not another invasion?”

Someone shouts from the far side of the yard and a little cheer goes up at some joke. Henry glances over, a bright smile at once on his face, and he laughs as if he knows what the joke was, like a child will laugh, trying to join in.

“Don’t!” I say suddenly. It hurts me to see him, even now, trying to play at being a carefree king before a court that he cannot trust.

“I have to smile,” he says. “There is a boy in Ireland very free with his smiles. They say he is all smiles, all charm.”

I think what this new threat will mean to us—to Maggie, newly married and hoping that her brother might be released to live with her and her husband, to my mother enclosed at Bermondsey Abbey. Neither my mother nor my cousin will ever be free if there is someone pretending to be our Prince Richard, mustering troops in Ireland. Henry will never trust any of us if someone from the House of York is leading a French army against him. “May I write and tell my mother of this false boy?” I ask him. “It’s distressing to have Richard’s name taken once again.”