“You can ask her,” he concedes. “But she’s not well.”

“The abbot wrote to you? And not to me? Why did he not write at once to me?”

His quick grimace tells me that he has learned this not in a letter but as a secret from his spy network. “Oh,” I say, realizing. “You are watching her? Even now?”

“I have every reason to think that she is at the very center of the plotting of the Irish and the French,” he says quietly. “And it won’t be the first time she’s called the doctor just to send a secret message.”

“And the boy?” I ask.

Henry makes a small grimace; I can see him swallow down his apprehension. “Slipped away. Again. He didn’t trust Pregent Meno, his former friend; he didn’t take the bait I sent him. He’s gone somewhere. I don’t even know where. Probably France. He’s somewhere out there.” He shakes his head. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll find him. And I won’t talk of this with you when you are about to go into confinement. Go in with a quiet heart, Elizabeth, and give me a handsome son. Nothing keeps the boy more firmly from our door than our own princes. You can send for your mother if you wish, and she can stay with you till after the birth.”

“Thank you,” I say. He takes my hand and kisses it, then, with the whole court watching, he kisses me gently on the mouth. “I love you,” he says quietly into my ear. I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. “I wish for both of us that we could be at peace.”

For a moment I almost hesitate, wanting to tell him what I know, wanting to warn him that my mother is radiant with hope, certain that she will see her son again. For a moment I want to confess to him that I sent a page boy into the Tower in place of my brother, that among the princes who rise against him, the legion of princes, there may be one who is a true prince—the little boy who set out from sanctuary in a cloak too big for him, who had to sail away from his mother in a little boat on the dark water, who will come back to England and take the throne from our son if he can, whose claims we will have to face together someday.

Almost I speak; but then I see the pale guarded face of his mother among the smiling court, and I think that I dare not tell this suspicious family that the thing they fear most in the world is indeed true, and that I played a part in it.

“God bless you,” he says, and whispers again: “I love you.”

“And I you,” I say, surprising myself. And I turn and go into the shadowy room.

I write to my mother that evening and I receive a brief reply to say that she will come when she is well, but that just now the pain in her heart is a little worse and she is too weary to travel. She asks if Bridget can join her in the convent, and I send my little sister at once, telling her to bring my mother to court as soon as she is well enough. I pass my days in the shaded rooms of my confinement apartment, sewing and reading and listening to calming music from the lutenists who are kept on the other side of the screen, for the benefit of my modesty and of theirs. I am bored in the darkened rooms and it is hot and stuffy. I sleep lightly at night and doze during the day so that I think I am dreaming, floating between wakefulness and sleep, when one night I am awakened by a clear sweet sound, like a flute, or like a chorister singing one note very softly outside my window.