“Please be seated,” I say. “We will dine in a little while.”

Composedly, she takes her seat, folds her hands in her black silk lap, and looks at me. I note her earrings of black and the only other piece of jewelry that she wears, a gold brooch that is pinned to her belt: two gold hearts entwined. I permit myself a small smile, and there is an answering warmth in her eyes. I imagine that we are never going to say more than this.

We line up to prepare to enter the hall for dinner. I go first as queen, My Lady walks at my shoulder, slightly behind me, and Lady Katherine Huntly must come next, my sisters taking one step down the order of precedence. I glance back and see Cecily’s pale face, her lower lip pressed tight. She is now fourth behind me, and she does not like it.

“Is Lady Huntly going to return to Scotland?” I ask My Lady the King’s Mother, as we proceed into dinner.

“Surely she will,” My Lady replies. “What would she stay here for? Once her husband is dead?”

But apparently she is in no hurry to leave. She stays until my husband has completed his slow progress from Exeter to the palace. The outriders come into the stable yard and send a message to my rooms that the king is approaching and expects a formal welcome. I order my ladies to come with me and we go down the broad stone stairs to the double entrance doors, which are held wide open, welcoming the return of the hero. We arrange ourselves at the head of the steps. My Lady the King’s Mother’s ladies stand beside us, she makes sure she is on the same step as me so that I am not more prominent, and we wait in the bright autumn sunshine, listening for the clatter of the horses’ hooves.

“Has he sent the boy directly to the Tower?” Maggie asks me as she bends to pull out the train of my gown.

“He must have done,” I say. “What else would he do with him?”

“He hasn’t . . .” She hesitates. “He hasn’t killed him on the way here?”

I glance at the boy’s wife, all in black like a widow. She is wearing her black velvet cape against the cold and the gold brooch of twin hearts is pinned at the neck.

“I haven’t heard,” I say. I cannot help a little shiver. “Surely he would have sent word if he had done that? To the boy’s wife if not to me? Surely I would have known?”

“Surely he wouldn’t have executed him without a public announcement,” she says uncertainly.

Behind us, in the darkened hall, I hear the constant ripple of noise as the servants come through and run down the stairs to the stable yard so that they can line the road to watch the king come home in triumph.