He laughs shortly and says, as if to himself, “Stubborn as a mule, just as I warned my Lady Mother . . .” Then he says out loud, “No, this is not to cut your pretty throat but only your foot. Give me your foot.”

Unwillingly, I stretch out my foot, and he throws back the rich covers of the bed. “Seems a pity,” he says to himself. “You do have the most exquisite skin, and the arch of your instep is just kissable—it’s ridiculous that one should think of it, but any man would want to kiss just here . . .” and then he makes a quick painful slash that makes me flinch and cry out in pain.

“You hurt me!”

“Hold still,” he says, and squeezes my foot over the sheets so that two, three drops of blood fall on the whiteness, then he hands me a linen cloth. “You can bind it up. It will hardly show in the morning, it was nothing more than a scratch, and anyway you will put on stockings.”

I tie the cloth around my foot and look at him. “There’s no need to look so aggrieved,” he says. “That has saved your reputation. They’ll look at the sheets in the morning and there’s the stain that shows that you bled like a virgin on your wedding night. When your belly shows, we will say that he was a wedding-night baby, and when he is born we will say that he is an eight-month baby, come early.”

I put my hand to my belly where I can feel nothing more than a couple of handfuls of extra fat. “What would you know about an eight-month baby?” I ask. “What would you know about a show on the sheets?”

“My mother told me,” he says. “She told me to cut your foot.”

“I have so much to thank her for,” I say bitterly.

“You should do. For she told me to do this to make him into a honeymoon baby,” Henry says with grim humor. “A honeymoon baby, a blessing, and not a royal bastard.”

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1486

I am the wife of the King of England, but I don’t have the queen’s apartments in Westminster Palace. “Because you’re not queen,” Henry says simply.

Mouth downturned, eyes hostile, I just look at him.

“You’re not! And besides, my mother works with me on the state papers and it is easier for us to share a private room. It’s easy if our rooms are adjoining.”

“You use the secret passage which goes from your bedroom to hers?”

He flushes. “It’s hardly secret.”

“Private, then. My father built it so that he could join my mother in her rooms without the whole court escorting him. He had it made so that he could bed her without the whole court knowing when he was going to her. They liked to be together in secret.”