I see the eyes of the court upon me all the time, but I dare not meet their eyes and smile. I cannot judge who might smile at me, thinking that I am the cruelly treated wife of a husband who has lost once again his new habit of kindness, a man who has been told all his life that he should be king and now doubts it more than ever before. Or perhaps they are smiling at me because they are undetected, and think I am hidden too. Perhaps they are plotting treason and think I am with them. Perhaps they are smiling at me because they saw my mother’s seal in the traitor’s sack, and believe that my own seal was hidden away, lower down in the bag.

I think of the boy in Malines, the boy with golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, and imagine him walking like me, with his head up, as we children of York were taught to do. I think of him learning of the loss of the treasure, of the sack of seals; a crushing blow to his plans, the betrayal of his allies. They say that he expressed regret that Sir Robert had betrayed him, but that he did not curse or swear. He did not gulp as if he might be sick, and order everyone from the room. He behaved like a boy who was taught by a loving mother that the wheel of fortune may well turn against you, and there is no point in railing against it, or wishing it otherwise. He took the bad news like a prince of York, not like a Tudor.

WORCESTER CASTLE, SUMMER 1495

Nobody will tell me what is happening. I walk in a circle of silence, as if I am held like a leech in a jar of thick glass. Henry comes to my rooms but hardly speaks to me. He gets into my bed and does his duty as if he were visiting a brothel, a stewhouse; we have lost all the love that was growing between us. Now he wants to make another Tudor to have as a reserve against the boy. He has consulted astronomers and they think that a third Tudor prince would make his throne more secure. It seems that two heirs and one of them proclaimed as the Duke of York is not enough for him. We need to hide behind a wall of babies, and Henry will get them on me for necessity but not for love.

In July I tell him that I have missed my course and am with child again, and he nods silently; even this news cannot bring him joy. He stops coming to my room as a man released from a duty and I am glad to sleep with the companionship of one of my sisters, or with Margaret, who is at court while her husband scours the east of England for hidden traitors. I have lost the desire to lie with my husband, his touch is cold and his hands are bloody. His mother looks at me as if she would call the yeomen of the guard to arrest me for nothing more than my name.