The boy falls into this life as if he had been born and bred at a graceful court. He will sing with my lutenist if invited, he will read in French or Latin if someone hands him the storybook. He can ride any horse in the stables with the relaxed, easy confidence of a man who has been in the saddle since he was a boy, he can dance, he can turn a joke, he can compose a poem. When they put on an impromptu play he is quick and witty, when called to recite he has lengthy poems by heart. He has all the skills of a well-educated young nobleman. He is, in every way, like the prince he pretended to be.

Indeed, he stands out from these handsome young men in only one thing. Night and morning he greets Lady Katherine by kneeling at her feet and kissing her outstretched hand. Every morning, first thing, on the way to chapel, he drops down to his knee, pulls his hat from his head, and kisses, very gently, the hand she holds out to him and stays still for the brief moment that she rests her hand on his shoulder. In the evening, when we leave the great hall, or when I say that the music must stop in my rooms, he bows low to me with his odd, familiar smile, and then he turns to her and kneels at her feet.

“He must be ashamed that he brought her so low,” Cecily says after we have all observed this for several days. “He must be kneeling for her forgiveness.”

“Do you think so?” Maggie asks her. “Don’t you think that it is the only way that he can touch her? And she touch him?”

I watch them more closely after that, and I believe Maggie is right. If he can pass something to her, he makes sure that their fingertips brush. If the court is riding he is quickly at the shoulder of her horse to lift her into the saddle, and at the end of the day he is first into the stable yard, his own horse’s reins tossed to a groom so that he can lift her down, holding her for one moment before putting her gently on her feet. When they are playing cards their shoulders lean together at the table, when he is standing beside her horse and she is mounted high above him, he steps backwards until his fair head can brush against her saddle and her hand can drop from the reins to touch the nape of his neck.

She never rebuffs him, she does not avoid his touch. Of course, she cannot; while she is his wife she must be obedient to him. But clearly, there is a passion between them that they do not even try to hide. When they pour the wine at dinner he looks from his table over to hers and raises his glass to her and gets a quick half-hidden smile in return. When she walks past the young men playing at cards she pauses, just for a moment, to look at his hand, and sometimes leans down as if to see better, and he leans back and their cheeks brush, like a kiss. Throughout the court they move, two exceptionally beautiful young people, kept apart by the specific order of the king and yet going through the day in parallel; always with one eye on the other, like performers separated by the movement of a dance who are certain to come together again.