How bold we were. How shockingly daring in our pursuit of passion as the New Year bloomed. When his breath stirred my hair and his lips brushed against my nape, I cast aside my much-vaunted reputation. I was as wanton in my desire as any court whore, for his kisses were as intoxicating as fine wine, as heady as Young Henry’s favourite marchpane. The slide of his fingertips along my jaw to the sensitive hollow beneath my ear awoke desire in my belly.

How was it possible to conduct an affair of the heart under the eyes of the whole Court, in the midst of a royal palace where courtiers and servants, pages and bodyguards, scullions and royal nurses abounded? How was it possible for a sequestered woman, ordered to live out a life of nun-like chastity and respectability, to meet in secret a vital, dynamic man who stirred her cold heart to flame?

How was it possible to keep vulgar tongues from wagging, or for a determined man to seek out the company of the woman he desired when she was hedged about by the role she was forced to play? For Edmund Beaufort desired me. He left me in no doubt when his eyes smiled down into mine and our fingers dovetailed together.

How was it possible? It was not very difficult at all when James and his friends left us in the New Year. Did we not prove its simplicity? When a King’s household was no royal court at all but a close, muffled establishment tuned to the necessities of a young child, where there was no ceremony, no public appearance, no visits from foreign ambassadors, but rather a quiet nurturing atmosphere, it was so very easy.

No one looked for scandal or for gossip in so retired an existence. It was like looking to find a dangerous predator infiltrating a perfectly constructed nest, designed for the comfort and sustenance of only one precious chick. I was the perfect Queen Mother, steeped in respectability, Henry was the Young King who thrived and learned his lessons, and Edmund, the well-loved royal cousin, had every right to visit the Young King’s household as he wished, bringing gifts and a breath of the outside world from Westminster and beyond.

Young Henry looked for his coming with innocent pleasure, delirious when Edmund lifted him high, swinging him round until he shrieked in excitement. The gift of a silver ship, magnificently in full sail and usefully mobile on four wheels, proved the perfect toy. Young Henry adored his cousin Edmund.

And so did I.

So Edmund became a frequent visitor to Windsor, and we sought each other out with no words that could be misinterpreted by a casual observer. Merely a glance of eye, the touch of fingertips as he gave me a goblet of wine, or a carefully contrived brush of tunic against houppelande. We made no extravagant promises that could not be kept. Our love was conducted entirely in the present. All I wished for was to be with him, and he with me.

‘You are me and I am you,’ he murmured in my ear.

He chased the shadows from my mind with expert, knowing hands and mouth.

So I was older than he by a handful of years. Yet Edmund’s experience was so much greater than mine that I felt I was the younger. He was a true Beaufort, confident and ambitious, raised to see his strengths and develop them by every means possible. The royal blood, no longer denied but recognised by law, ran strong through his veins. And yet how subtle he could be for so young a man, when I might have thought that self-control would be overswept by pure, vibrant love of life.

His outrageous Twelfth Night schemes made me wary of my reputation, but I found there was no need. True, he carried me along, a leaf in a stream, refusing to allow me to linger in the eddy at the brook’s side, refusing to allow me to hold back and think, yet never did he put my reputation into harm’s way before inquisitive and prurient eyes.

Pouring out all the love in my arid existence, I thanked him silently, from the bottom of my newly awoken heart, for his ineffable compassion for my position. When his arms banded round me, shielding me against the world, I clung to him.

‘Don’t think,’ he said more than once. ‘Don’t worry that the world will condemn. Dance with me, Queen Kat. Laugh and enjoy all that life can offer.’

But in public he never overstepped the mark of decency. He danced with my damsels too. He never showed a need to push me beyond the inexperienced limit of my own desires. Or not yet.

Sometimes, in my lonely bed, I questioned the vital happiness that gripped me. Did I deserve it? Perhaps I should step more slowly, perhaps it was wrong for me to allow Edmund to dictate my will and order my days. Perhaps I should worry about the world’s condemnation. I had seen the results of cruel gossip in my mother’s life. Perhaps I should know better than to follow in her dangerous footsteps.

And then, when I heard his voice raised in laughter or needle-quick response, my resolution to be sensible and abstemious was all destroyed.

Fleetingly I wished that James was still close, a valuable confidant for a troubled mind, but James had achieved his heart’s desire. He and Joan, now wed, were deliriously ensconced in Scotland. I rejoiced for him—but I did not need him. My mind was not troubled, my feet were light with joy.

How many secret places were there to discover in a royal palace, for two lovers bent on a snatched moment of solitude? In Windsor I could map them all. I could trace our steps over that year and point to every single blessed spot on the paving stones where our love grew stronger, more intense. I could catch my breath as I recalled Edmund’s seduction of my senses beneath every arch and carved rafter. How carefully, how cleverly those assignations were selected.

My guilt, if guilt it must be, was as great as his for I was a willing accomplice, lured by a wealth of poetry that tripped from his lips. My pale soul blazed with light, made vibrant and alive by a fanfare of colour.

Yours is the clasp

That holds my loyalty,

You dismiss all my heart’s sorrow

There—exactly there at the turn in the stair in the great Round Tower, where we climbed from first to second floor. Where the light from the narrow window did not quite illuminate us, and the echo of approaching footsteps in either direction would alert us.

Your love and my love

keep each other company

Behind the carved screen in the Chapel of St George, such a sacred place to celebrate un-sacred love with passion-heated kisses. There we stood, I trembling in his arms, hidden by the rigid form of leaves and flowers created by a master craftsman who had had no idea that his artifice would hide the flushed cheeks of a Queen of England and her lover.

That your love is constant

in its love for mine

is a solace beyond compare

Yet not always so enclosed. In the calm solemnity of the King’s Cloister, when the canons and clerks were busy about their affairs with no time to enjoy leisure, there we walked hand in hand. I had no recollection of what we said, only of the slide of his hand against mine, his fingers weaving with mine, his palm hard and calloused from swordplay and reins. And, satiated with each other, we progressed to the Little Cloister when the noisy choristers were absent, intent on their choral duties, their voices raised in miraculous polyphony as a plangent accompaniment to our sighs.

Adam lay bounden,

Bounden in a bond,

Four thousand winter

Thought he not too long.

A bitter-sweet backdrop. I too was bounden in a bond from which I had no desire to break free. The words, the minor harmonies, were almost too beautiful for me to bear.

And all was for an apple,

An apple that he took.

As clerkes finden,

Written in their book.

And Edmund, master of all miraculous sleight of hand, when passion became too much, our breathing too roused, calmed my desire. As if he had conjured it all—as perhaps he had, for I thought nothing beyond him—he produced an apple from his sleeve, smoothly russet, that he presented to me as if it were a precious gem, and we shared it, piece by piece as he wielded his knife. He licked the juice of it from my fingers—until desire built and built again, and I thought I could not exist without him.

Back within enclosing walls, the Old Hall, converted years ago into a chamber for personal use of the king but now unused until Young Henry would be of age to occupy it, provided us with a vast expanse of space. Here, where we might be seen, we were discreetly adroit, a brush of fingertips our only recognition. With its twenty windows, greedy eyes for the world, there were no kisses exchanged here.

Ah, but within the privacy of the Rose Chamber, now that was a different matter. Our garments merging with the blue, green and vermillion paint and the gleam of gold leaf, camouflaging us like a butterfly on a bright flower, our bodies were free to meet and cling, one chrysalis.

Your love and my love

Shall be steadfast in their loyalty

And never drift apart…

Perhaps we became bold as the months passed. Queen Philippa’s chamber was hung with mirrors on all four sides. Here we dared fate, our two forms, melded into one in a passionate kiss, Edmund’s hands taking possession over the damask folds, smoothing down over the dip of waist, the swell of breast and hip, multiplied again and again from every side.

And all the other moments, the sweet taste, the scent of him kept me from sleep, when the excitement engulfed me and the recall of his touch made my belly clench and turned my blood to molten gold. The dancing chamber where in an impromptu revel, ordered up by Edmund for no reason at all but that he considered the court a dull place, we danced and touched because it was allowed.

A breathless, laughing dash up the stairs of the Round Tower to where King Edward’s weight-driven clock told the hours, its hands moving slowly, the gears clicking and groaning as we sighed and kissed and caressed. An audience chamber, deserted of all but us. The Spicerie Gate-house, a dangerously thronged place as the main entrance to the palace, could still afford us the chance of a gaze of such longing that my fair skin was suffused with colour. Or the covered walkway between Great Hall and kitchens, busy with maidservants and pages, but not so busy that we could not linger…

And then, when the weather was clement, the private garden with its low hedges and herbs, where we were caught up in the deep shadow of the massive bulk of Salisbury Tower. Edmund’s kisses became more possessive with tongue and teeth until my senses were awash with him.

Who could blame me for falling headlong into delicious love? Edmund Beaufort was the sorcerer who magicked my sad heart into joy. My winter melancholy, instead of returning at the turn of the year, vanished into oblivion, like smoke dispersed in a light breeze. A gesture as simple as the stroke of Edmund’s tongue across my palm banished it entirely until I no longer recalled the depths of misery into which I had once fallen.

In that year I lived in a world apart, anticipating the next moment when I would see him, and the next and the next. My skin tingling, breath short, appetite destroyed, I lived for each moment we were together, mourning him through his enforced absences. A feverish pleasure gripped me, for was it not a fever? If it was, I embraced it. I danced through those days.

When Young Henry was knighted, John of Bedford’s sword touching his four-year-old shoulder lightly, I could not contain my pride and delight. No doubt radiant with it, I smiled across the crowd to Edmund, deliriously happy to share my triumph with such a man as he. He was a Beaufort, a man of rank, of consequence. A man of potential in the English Court. He was truly worthy of my love.

Secrecy could not last. Intimate affairs must of necessity be discovered and come into the public domain. Endless discretion was not on the plate of a young man of barely twenty summers, or on the platter of a restless, widowed Queen, and so we ran the gauntlet of the Court and were eventually discovered. The rumours began, a whisper, an arch glance in our direction, then the soft hush of words that died away as I entered a room.

‘It’s not wise, my lady.’ Alice, the first to voice her disapproval, was severe.

‘It is glorious,’ I replied, standing at the window in my chamber, tucking an autumn rose, a gift, into the knot of my girdle, humming the verse that Edmund had sung, wallowing in the soft sentiments.