“The ambassador is proposing a marriage for Prince Arthur,” Henry tells me quietly. “The youngest Spanish princess, the Infanta Katherine of Aragon.”

I look from Henry’s smiling face to the smug ambassador and understand that I am to be pleased. “What a good idea,” I say. “But they are still so young!”

“A betrothal, to indicate the friendship between our countries,” Henry says smoothly. He nods to the ambassadors and leads me to the top table out of earshot. “It’s not just to link Spain to our interests, a constant ally against France, it’s to get the boy. They have promised me if Arthur is betrothed, that they’ll tempt the boy to visit them with the promise of an alliance. They’ll get him to Granada and hand him over to us.”

“He won’t go,” I say certainly. “Why would he leave his wife in Scotland and go to Spain?”

“Because he wants the support of Spain for his invasion,” Henry says shortly. “But they will stand as our ally. They will give us their infanta in marriage, and they will capture our traitor to make sure that she marries the only heir to the throne. Their interests become our interests. And they are newly come to their thrones themselves. They know what it is like to fight for their kingdom. When they betroth their princess to our prince they sign a death warrant for the boy. They will want him dead just as we do.”

The court rise to their feet and acknowledge us, bowing low to me, and the server of the ewery comes to me with the golden bowl filled with warm water. I dip my fingers in the scented water and wipe them on the napkin. “But, husband—”

“Never mind,” Henry says shortly. “When you have had our new baby and come back to court we will talk of these things. Now you must receive the good wishes of the court, go to your confinement, and think about nothing but a good birth. I am hoping for another boy from you, Elizabeth.”

I smile, as if I am reassured, and I glance down the court where the ambassador de Puebla is seated, above the saltcellar, an honored guest, and I wonder if he could be a man so two-faced, so inveterate in his own ambition, that he would promise friendship to a boy of twenty-two and betray him to his death. He feels my gaze upon him and looks up to smile at me, and I think, Yes, yes, he is.

PALACE OF SHEEN, RICHMOND, MARCH 1496

I enter my confinement with a heavy heart, still missing my little girl Elizabeth, and this labor is long and hard. My sister Anne laughs and says she will study how it is done as she is with child, but what she sees makes her fearful. They give me strong birthing ale after some hours, and I wish I had my mother with me to fix me with her cool gray gaze, and to whisper to me of the river and rest, and help me through the pain. At about midnight I can feel the urgency of the baby and I squat like a peasant woman and bear down and then I hear the little faint cry and I cry too, for joy that I have had another child, for sheer exhaustion, and I find I am sobbing as if heartbroken, missing the brother that I fear I will never see, and his wife that I will never meet, and their baby, a cousin to this child, who will never play with her.