I lower my eyes. “Please tell her I am grateful,” I say. “I am always, always grateful.”

My mother comes to my rooms, her face pale, a letter in her hand.

“What d’you have there? Nothing good by the looks of it.”

“It’s a proposal from King Henry that I should marry.”

I take the letter from her hands. “You?” I ask. “You? What does he mean?”

I start to scan the paper but I break off to look at her. Even her lips are white. She is nodding her head, as if she is lost for words, nodding and saying nothing.

“Marry who? Stop it, Mother. You’re frightening me. What is he thinking of? Who is he thinking of?”

“James of Scotland.” She gives a little gasp, almost a laugh. “There at the very bottom of the letter, after all the compliments and praising my youthful looks and good health. He says I am to marry the King of Scotland, and go far away to Edinburgh, and never come back.”

I turn to the page again. It is a polite letter from my husband to my mother in which he says that she will oblige him very much by meeting with the Scottish ambassador and accepting his proposal of marriage from the King of Scotland, and agree to the date, which they will suggest, for a wedding this summer.

I look at her. “He’s gone mad. He can’t command this. He can’t tell you to marry. He wouldn’t dare. This will be his mother’s plan. You can’t possibly go.”

She has a hand to her mouth to hide her trembling lips. “I imagine that I will have to go. They can make me go.”

“Mother, I can’t be here without you!”

“If he orders it?”

“I can’t live here without you!”

“I can’t bear to leave you. But if the king commands it, we’ll have no choice.”

“You can’t marry again!” I am shocked at the very thought of it. “You shouldn’t even think of it!”

She puts her hand over her eyes. “I can hardly imagine such a thing. Your father . . .” She breaks off. “Elizabeth, my dearest, I told you that you had to be a smiling bride, I told my sister Katherine that she of all people knows that women have to marry where they are bid, and I agreed to the betrothal of Cecily to Henry’s choice. I can’t pretend that I am the only one of us who must be spared. Henry won the battle. He now commands England. If he orders that I marry, even that I marry the King of Scotland, I will have to go to Scotland.”

“It’ll be his mother,” I burst out. “It’ll be his mother who wants you out of the way, not him!”

“Yes,” my mother says slowly. “It probably is her. But she has miscalculated. Not for the first time she has made a mistake in her dealings with me.”