“Send who?”

He looks furtive. “Margaret. Our daughter Margaret.”

I look at him as if he is mad. “Our daughter is six years old.” I state the obvious. “Do you think to marry her to the King of Scotland, who is—what?—more than twenty?”

“I think to offer her,” he says. “When she is of marriageable age he will only be in his thirties, it’s not a bad match.”

“But my lord—this is to choose all our children’s marriages with your eyes only on the one boy. You have already promised Arthur to Spain in return for them kidnapping him?”

“He won’t go. He’s too cunning.”

“And so, you would give up our little daughter to your enemy to buy the boy?”

“You would rather he was roaming free?” he snaps.

“No, of course not! But . . .”

Already, I have said too much and alerted Henry’s fears.

“I shall propose her as a wife for the King of Scotland, and in return he will give me the boy in chains,” Henry says flatly. “And whether you are thinking of sparing our little girl or of the boy when you say you don’t want such a marriage, it makes no difference. She is a Tudor princess, she must be married where she can serve our interests. She has to do her duty, as I have to do mine—every day. As every one of us has to do.”

I tighten my grip on our new baby. “And this child too? You’ve hardly looked at her. Is every one of our children only of value as a card for you to play? In this one game? In this single unstoppable disproportionate war against a boy?”

He is not even angry; his face is bitter as if his duty is hard for him, harder than anything he would propose for anyone else. “Of course,” he says flatly. “And if Margaret is the price for the death of the boy, then it is a good bargain for me.”

This summer, two new lines are graven on Henry’s face, which run from nose to mouth and mark how his lips are habitually downturned. An habitual scowl grooves his face as one report after another comes to him of the Scottish preparation for war and the weakness of the defenses of northern England. Half of the northern gentry have already crossed over the border of Scotland to be with the boy, and the families they have left behind are not stirring themselves to fight for Henry against their kinsmen.

Every evening after dinner Henry goes to his mother’s rooms and the two of them count, again and again, the names of those that they can trust in the North of England. My Lady has drawn up a list of those that they can be sure of and those that they doubt. I see both lists when I enter the rooms to bid her good night. The scroll of those they trust and that they judge to be able is weighted with an ink pot, a quill beside it, as if they are hoping to write more names, to add loyalists. The scroll of those they mistrust lolls over the table and unrolls itself towards the floor. Name after name is written with a query beside it. Nothing could exhibit more vividly that the king and his mother are afraid of their own countrymen and -women, that the king and his mother are counting their friends and finding the list too short, that the king and his mother are counting their enemies and seeing the numbers grow every day.