At once I hesitate. “Oh, Henry! He’s so young.”

“No, he’s not. He’s six this year. He is Prince of Wales. He must rule his principality.”

I hesitate. My brother Edward went to Wales to serve as its prince, and was captured on the road as he came home for his father’s funeral. I can’t help but dread the thought of Arthur going there too, of the road running east from Wales through Stony Stratford, the village where they took our uncle Anthony and we never saw him again.

“He’ll be safe,” my husband promises. “He’ll be safe in Wales. He’ll have his own court and his own guard. And—even better than this—he’ll be safe from any pretender. I have made a little progress in this difficult matter with the capture of the silk merchant. But a little progress is better than none at all.”

“You have made progress with the silk merchant?”

“The silk merchant is proving most helpful. My advisor has seen him, and spoken with him. He has reasoned with him, and the man has changed his mind, his side, and his loyalty.”

I nod. This means that Henry’s spy has beaten, coerced, and bribed the silk merchant to say all that he knows about the boy, and now will pay him to spy for us, and the boy—whoever he is—will be betrayed. He has lost a friend and probably does not even know it. “Does he say who the boy is?”

“Nobody can say who he is. He says the name that the boy likes to use.”

“He calls himself my brother Richard?”

“Yes.”

“And did the silk merchant see any proofs?”

“Merchant Meno met the boy at the Portuguese court, where he was widely known as your brother, popular among all the lads, beautifully dressed, well educated. He told everyone he had escaped, as by a miracle, from the Tower.”

“Did he say how?” I ask. If my husband learns that it was my mother and me who put a little page boy into the Tower in place of my brother, then she will face a charge of treason and execution and my life will be ruined for he will never trust me again.

“He never says how,” my husband replies irritably. “He says that he promised not to say, until he is restored to his throne. Imagine that! Imagine a boy with the nerve to say such a thing!”

I nod. I can imagine a boy like this only too well. He used to always win at hide-and-seek because he had the patience and the cunning to hide longer than anyone else. He would wait until we were called for dinner before he came out laughing. And he loved his mother and would never put her at risk, not even to prove his claim.

“Pregent Meno now says that the boy wanted to see the world and it so happened that they sailed to Ireland. If you believed him you would think that the boy invented himself, all alone, with no backers and no money and no support. If you believed him you would have to think that Ireland, a country filled with savages wearing little more than animal skins, was an excellent market for silk, and that any clever silk merchant was likely to go there, and most likely to show his wares by dressing his page boy up like a prince.”