“But the boy is down,” I urge her. “They say that he has been beaten, his beauty is gone, his health is broken. He claims nothing anymore, he agrees to whatever they put to him, he will take any name you choose for him, his spirit is destroyed, he is no longer claiming to be a prince, he no longer looks like a prince. You have defeated him, he is down in the mud.”

She turns her head away from me. “He could be diminished, he could be dirty, he could be starved, and yet he would still shine,” she says. “He always looks the part that he chooses to play. I heard it from someone who had gone to stare at him, they had gone to laugh at him, but they said that he looked like Jesus: battered and wounded and pained but still the Son of God. They said he looked like a saint. They said he looked like a broken prince, a damaged lamb, a dimmed light. Of course, he can’t be freed. He can never be freed.”

This vengeful old harridan is Henry’s chief and only councillor, so if she refuses me there is no point in approaching Henry. All the same, I wait until he has dined well and drunk deeply and we are seated in his mother’s comfortable private rooms. When she steps out for a moment, I take my chance.

“I want to ask for mercy for the boy,” I say. “And for my cousin Edward. While I am carrying a new child, a new heir for the Tudors, our line must be safe. Surely we can release these two young men? They can be no threat to us now. In our nursery already we have Prince Arthur and Henry, the two girls, and another child is on the way. I would be at peace in my mind, I would be at peace carrying our child, if I know that those two young men were released, into exile, wherever you wish. I would be able to give birth to my child if I could be easy in my mind.” It’s my trump card and I expect Henry to at least listen to me.

“It’s not possible,” he says at once, without even considering the request. Like his mother, he does not look at me as he tells me that my cousin and the boy who passed as my brother are lost to me.

“Why is it not possible?” I insist.

He extends his thin hands. “One”—he counts on his fingers—“the King and Queen of Spain will not send their daughter to marry Arthur unless they are sure our succession is certain. If you want to see your son married, we have to see the boy and your cousin dead.”

I nearly choke. “They can’t demand such a thing! They have no right to order us to kill our own kinsmen!”

“They can. They do. It is their condition for the wedding and the wedding must go ahead.”