“Mercy for my husband!”

I shake my head. I lean forwards and touch her shoulder. “Truly, I have no power in this court. I had hoped that you would speak to the king for them both.”

“He promised me,” she says, her voice a little whisper of sound. “He promised me this summer. But now my husband is to be tried before a jury.”

I don’t offer her a lie that perhaps they will not convict, nor suggest that the evidence will not be damning.

“Could you not persuade the king as you did once before?” I ask her. “Could you not find a smile for him, could you not allow him—allow him whatever he wants?”

Her dark eyes flicker up to mine in one long look, as if to acknowledge the irony that I should urge her to seduce my husband to save the boy. We know what the boy means to both of us.

“I paid my side of the bargain this summer, when he said my husband would be safe,” she says. “His Grace said that if he stayed quietly in prison he could be released, later. I gave the king what he wanted in return. I have nothing more to bargain with.”

I roll back my head and close my eyes for a moment. I am beyond weariness, both of kings and the bargains they make and the women who have to find ways to please them. “You have lost your influence?”

She nods, looking me straight in the eye and admitting her shame. “I have nothing left to tempt him.” She pauses to apologize to me. “I am sorry. I did not know what else I could do this summer when they told me that my husband was in prison and taking a beating. I had nothing else to offer.”

I sigh. “I will speak with him,” I say. “But I have nothing to offer him either.”

I send my chamberlain to request an audience with the king and I am shown into his privy chamber. His mother stands behind the throne and does not move when I enter. The groom of the chamber sets a seat for me and I face Henry across the polished dark table, his mother standing like a sentry against the world, behind him.

“We know why you are here,” My Lady says briefly. “But there is nothing that can be done.”

I ignore her and look at my husband. “My lord, I don’t come to plead for the two of them. I am here because I am afraid that you are putting us in danger,” I say softly.

At once he is alert. This is a man always ready to be alert to danger.

“We are in danger every day that the boy lives,” he replies.

“Aside from that. There is a danger that you don’t know.”

“You have come to warn us?” Lady Margaret asks scornfully.

“I have.”