“Was he hoping for a pardon?” she breathes, her face agonized. “I could not get him a pardon. Did he think he might be pardoned?”

“Perhaps a miracle,” Thomas suggests. “He looked around and then he bent his head and prayed and they took the ladder out from under his feet and he dropped.”

“Was it quick?” Margaret whispers.

“It took an hour, or perhaps more,” Thomas said. “No one was allowed close to him, so nobody could drag hold of his feet and break his neck to make it quicker. But he hung quietly enough, and then he was gone. He died like a brave man, and the people at the front of the scaffold were praying for him, all the time.”

Lady Katherine drops to her knees and bows her head in prayer, Margaret closes her eyes. Thomas looks from one to another of us, three grieving women.

“So it’s over,” I say. “This whole long joust of fear and playacting and deception and deceit is over.”

“Except for Teddy,” Margaret says.

Margaret and I go together to the king to try to save Teddy but he will not see us. Margaret’s husband, Sir Richard, comes to me in my rooms and begs me not to intercede for his wife’s only brother. “Better for us all if he is put to the death than returned to that prison,” he says bluntly. “Better for us all if the king does not think of Margaret as a woman of the House of York. Better for us all if the young man dies now, without a rebellion forming around him again. Please, Your Grace, teach Margaret to see this with patience. Please, teach her to let her brother go. It’s been no life for him, not since he was a little boy. Let it end here, and then perhaps people will forget that my son is of the House of York and he, at least, will be safe.”

I hesitate.

“The king is hunting Edmund de la Pole,” he says. “The king wants all of the House of York sworn to his service or dead. Please, Your Grace, tell Margaret to give up her brother that she may keep her son.”

“Like me?” I whisper, too low for him to hear.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 28 NOVEMBER 1499

On the day of Teddy’s execution there is a great storm which thunders over the palace, and the fury of lightning makes us close the shutters and gather around the fires. It pours down on Tower Green, making the grass wet and treacherous in the afternoon as Teddy walks unsteadily along the path to the scaffold of wood, where the black-masked headsman waits with his axe. There is a priest with him, and witnesses before the scaffold, but Teddy sees no friendly face though he looks around for someone to wave at. He was always taught to smile and wave when he saw a crowd, he remembers that one of the House of York must always smile and acknowledge their friends.