“No,” I say. I can’t believe what I am hearing as Henry leaps up, shrugging off my hand from his shoulder, gone from despair to sudden rage.

“It’s the Yorks!” he shouts at me. “Your family again! Edmund de la Pole missing! Your cousin at the heart of plots! The white rose painted on every street corner! Your family and your retainers and your servants and your damned charm and family loyalty and magic—God knows what it is that works for you. God knows why it works for him. He has lost his looks, he is beaten to ugliness, I saw to that. He has lost his charm—he can’t smile with no teeth. He has lost his fortune and his ruby brooch, and his wife is in my keeping, but still they flock to him. Still they would turn out for him, still I am threatened by him. There he is, imprisoned in the Tower, no friends but the ones I allow him, no companions but the scum that I send to him, and still he musters an army against me and I have to defend myself, and defend you and defend our sons.”

I sink down before his rage; almost, I could kneel before him. “My lord—”

“Don’t speak to me,” he says furiously. “This is his death warrant. I can do nothing now but have him killed. Wherever he is, whatever shape he takes, whatever name he goes by, they seek him out, they believe in him, they want him as King of England.”

“He was not plotting!” I say urgently. “You say yourself it was your plot. It was not him and Teddy! He was innocent of anything but what you set men to do to him. He did nothing but agree to your plan.”

“He threatens me by breathing,” Henry says flatly. “His broken smile is my undoing. Even in prison with a smashed face, he is a handsome prince. There is nothing for him but death.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1499

Henry summons the council of all his lords to listen to the charges of treason against Teddy; they call him “Edward naming himself of Warwick” as if no one has a name that can be trusted anymore. They call the boy Perkin Warbeck and list dozens of named others. Alarmed, frightened into obedience, the council commands the sheriffs to pick out a jury from the citizens of London who will hear the evidence and choose a verdict.

Lady Katherine comes to my rooms, her face whiter than the lace she has in her hand. She is making a trim for a man’s collar and the bright beads for the lace making tremble on the cushion.

She kneels on the floor before me; slowly she removes her headdress and her hair tumbles down. She bows low, almost to my feet. “Your Grace, I beg for mercy,” she says.

I look at her bowed head, the lustrous dark hair. “I have no power,” I say.