“You think I have a calling?” I am whispering, she is so completely convincing.

“You will be the mother of the next King of England,” she declares. “The red rose and the white, a rose without a thorn. You will have a son, and we will call him Arthur of England.” She takes my hands. “This is your destiny, my daughter. I will help you.”

“Arthur.” Wonderingly, I repeat the name that Richard chose for the son he hoped to have with me.

“It is my dream,” she says.

It was our dream too. I let her hold my hands and I don’t pull away.

“God has brought us together,” she tells me earnestly. “God has brought you to me, and you are going to give me a grandson. You are going to bring peace to England, you are going to be the peace which ends the Cousins’ War. Elizabeth, you will be a peacemaker and God Himself will call you blessed.”

Amazed at her vision, I let her hold my hands in her firm grip, and I don’t disagree.

I never tell my mother what passed between me and My Lady the King’s Mother. She raises an eyebrow at my discretion but does not ask me more. “At any rate, she said nothing to make you think that she has changed her mind about the betrothal,” she confirms.

“On the contrary, she assured me that we will marry. It will go ahead. She promised to be my friend.”

My mother hides a smile. “How kind,” is all she says. “Helpful of her.”

So we wait, with some confidence, for our invitation to the coronation, expecting to be told to go to the royal wardrobe to be fitted for our gowns. Cecily, especially, is desperate for her new robes and for the chance for us all to be seen in the world as the five York princesses once more. Only when Henry has reversed the Act of Parliament that named us as bastards and our parents’ marriage as a bigamous fraud can we wear our ermine and crowns once again. Henry’s coronation will be our first chance since Richard’s death to appear to the world in our true colors as princesses of York once again.

I am confident that we will all attend his coronation; yet, still, no word comes. I am certain that he must want his future wife to watch him take the crown on his head and the scepter in his hand. Even if he has no curiosity to see me, how can he not want to demonstrate his victory before us, the previous royal family? Surely he will want me to see him at his moment of greatest glory?

I feel more like a sleeping princess in a fairy story than the woman who is promised in marriage to the new King of England. I may live in the royal palace, and sleep in one of the best rooms, I may be served with courtesy though without the bended knee that people must show to the royal family. But I live here quietly, without a court, without the usual crowd of flatterers, friends, and petitioners, without sight of the king: a princess without a crown, a betrothed without a bridegroom, a bride with no date for her wedding.