I take his hands and I can hear, but I don’t see, my ladies skitter out of the room to leave us alone. “I am so sorry I was not here,” he says. “God forgive me that I was not with you.”

“You’re never here,” I say softly. “Nothing matters to you anymore but the boy.”

“I am trying to defend the inheritance for all our children.” He raises his head but speaks without any anger. “I was trying to make her safe in her own country. Oh, dear child, poor little child. I didn’t realize she was so ill, I should have listened to you. God forgive me that I did not.”

“She wasn’t really ill,” I say. “She just never thrived. When she died it wasn’t a struggle at all, it was as if she just sighed, and then she was gone.”

He bows his head and puts his face against my hands in my lap. I can feel a hot tear on my fingers, and I bend over him and hold him tightly, I grip him as if I would feel his strength and have him feel mine.

“God bless her,” he says. “And forgive me for being away. I feel her loss more than you know, more than I can tell you. I know it seems that I’m not a good father to our children, and I’m not a good husband to you—but I care for them and for you more than you know, Elizabeth. I swear that at least I will be a good king for them. I will keep the kingdom for my children and your throne for you, and you will see your son Arthur inherit.”

“Hush,” I say. With the memory of Elizabeth, warm and limp in my arms, I don’t want to tempt fate by foretelling the future of our other children.

He gets up and I stand with him as he wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly, his face against my neck as if he would inhale comfort from the scent of my skin.

“Forgive me,” he breathes. “I can hardly ask it of you; but I do. Forgive me, Elizabeth.”

“You are a good husband, Henry,” I reassure him. “And a good father. I know that you love us in your heart, I know that you wouldn’t have gone away if you had thought we might lose her, and see, here you are—home almost before I had sent for you.”

He tips his head back to look at me, but he does not deny that it was his spies who told me that his daughter was dead. He did not hear it first from me. “I have to know everything,” is all he says. “That’s how I keep us safe.”

My Lady the King’s Mother plans and executes a great funeral for our little girl. She is buried as a princess in the chapel of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Archbishop Morton performs the funeral service, the Bishop of Worcester, who told me that the boy was coming home, serves the Mass with quiet dignity. I cannot tell Henry that the bishop was smiling the night that the beacons were lit for the landing of the boy. I cannot report on the priest who is burying my child. I fold my hands before me and I rest my head against them and I pray for her precious soul and I know without doubt that she is in heaven; and that I am left to the bitterness of a loss on earth.