I grit my teeth at having to discuss something so intimate with him. “No.”

“That’s good, that’s so good,” he says. “That’s the most important thing!” His pride and excitement would be such a pleasure from a loving husband, but from him it grates on me. I look at him in blank enmity and keep my silence.

“Now, Elizabeth, I just wanted to tell you that our wedding day is to be the feast of St. Margaret of Hungary. My mother has it all planned, you need do nothing.”

“Except walk up the aisle and consent,” I suggest. “I suppose even your mother will concede that I have to give my consent.”

He nods. “Consent, and look happy,” he adds. “England wants to see a joyful bride, and so do I. You will please me in this, Elizabeth. It is my wish.”

St. Margaret of Hungary was a princess like me, but she lived in a convent in such poverty that she fasted to death. The choice of her day for my wedding by my mother-in-law does not escape me. “Humble and penitent.” I remind him of the motto his mother chose for me. “Humble and penitent like St. Margaret.”

He has the grace to chuckle. “You can be as humble and penitent as you like.” He smiles and looks as if he would take my hand and kiss me. “You can’t exceed in humility for us, my sweetheart.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 18 JANUARY 1486

I am a winter bride, and the morning of my wedding day is as bitterly cold as my heart. I wake to the flowers of frost on my windows, and Bess, coming into the room, begs me to stay in bed until she has the fire banked up and my linen laid out to warm before it.

I step out of my bed and she pulls my nightgown over my head and then offers me my undergarments, all new and trimmed with white silk embroidery on the white linen at the hem, then my red satin overgown slashed at the sleeves and opening at the front to show a black silk damask undergown. Fussing, she ties the laces under the arms while the two other maids-in-waiting tie those at the back. It is a little tighter than when it was first fitted on me. My breasts have grown fuller and my waist is thickening. I notice the changes, but nobody else does yet. I am losing the body that my lover adored, the girlish litheness that he used to wrap around his battle-hardened body. Instead I will be the shape that my husband’s mother wants: a rounded fertile pear of a woman, a vessel for Tudor seed, a pot.

I stand like a child’s doll, being dressed as if I were made of lumpy straw stuffed in a sock, limp in their hands. The gown is darkly magnificent, making my hair shine golden, and my skin gleams coldly white against the rich deep fabric. The door opens and my mother comes in. She is already in her gown of cream, trimmed with green and silver and ribbons, with her hair tied loosely at the back; later she will twist it under her heavy headdress. For the first time, I notice that she has a fine scattering of gray hairs among the blond; she is a golden queen no more.