My uncle Edward played a longer game, a deeper game. He stayed with Henry and invaded with him at Bosworth, and served beside him at the battle. He serves him still. Henry never forgets his friends, nor does he forget those who changed their minds during his time of exile. I think he will never again trust my brother Thomas, but he loves my uncle Edward and calls him his friend.

“He is sending me on a diplomatic mission,” my uncle says.

“To the King of Portugal? Surely Lisbon is not on the way to Granada?”

He spreads his hand and smiles at me, as if I might share a joke, or a secret. “Not directly to the King of Portugal. He wants me to see something that has arisen, appeared at the Portuguese court.”

“What sort of thing?”

He drops on his knee and kisses my hand. “A secret thing, a precious thing,” he says gleefully, then he rises up and goes. I look around for my mother and see her smiling at him as he works his way through the laughing, dancing, celebrating court. She watches his swift bow to Henry and the king’s discreet acknowledgment, and then my uncle slips through the great doors of the hall, as quiet as any spy.

That night Henry comes to my bed. He will come every single night only excepting the week of my course, or the nights of holy fasts or saints’ days. We have to conceive another child, we have to have another son. One is not enough to ensure the safety of the line. One is not enough to keep a new king steady on his throne. One son does not demonstrate powerfully enough the blessing of God on the new family.

It is an act without desire for me, from which I get no pleasure, part of my work as wife to the king. I face it with a sort of resigned weariness. He takes care not to hurt me, he keeps his weight off me, he does not kiss or caress me, which I would hate; he is as quick and as gentle as he can be. He takes care not to disgust me, washing before he comes to me, wearing clean linen. I don’t ask for any more.

But I find that I enjoy his company, the quiet peaceful time alone with him at the end of a day that is always crowded with people. He and I sit before the fire and we talk about the baby, how he is feeding today, how he is starting to smile when he sees me. I am certain that he knows me from all others, and knows Henry too, and that this proves his remarkable intelligence and promise. I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead? Who but his father would speculate with me as to whether he will be a scholar prince, or a warrior prince, or a prince like my father, who loved learning and was a commander of men above all others?