She doubles up, folding like a paper queen, and blindly reaches out a hand for me. “I have a pain. I have a pain.”

“No!” I say, and take her hand as her legs give way and she goes down. I drop to my knees beside her as her ladies come running. She looks up at me, her eyes black with fear and her face as white as one of the sails of the ships on the river, and she says: “Say nothing! This will pass.”

At once I turn to Bessie, and to Elizabeth Bryan. “You heard Her Grace. You two say nothing, and let’s get her inside.”

We are about to lift her when she suddenly screams loudly, as if someone has run her through with a spear. At once, half a dozen yeomen of the guard dash to her, but skid to a halt when they see her on the ground. They dare not touch her, her body is sacred. They are at a loss as to what they should do.

“Fetch a chair!” I snap at them, and one runs back. They come from the palace with a wooden chair with arms and a back, and we ladies help her into it. They carry the chair carefully to the palace, the beautiful palace on the river where Henry was born, the lucky palace for the Tudors, and we take her into the darkened room.

It is only half prepared, since she is more than a month before her time, but she goes into labor despite the rules in the great book of the court. The midwives look grim; the housemaids rush in with clean linen, hot water, tapestries for the walls, carpets for the tables, all the things that were being made ready but are suddenly needed now. Her pains come long and slow, as they prepare the room around her. A day and a night later the room is perfect, but still the baby has not been born.

She leans back on the richly embroidered pillows and scans the bowed heads of her ladies as they kneel in prayer. I know that she is looking for me and I stand up and go towards her. “Pray for me,” she whispers. “Please, Margaret, go to the chapel and pray for me.”

I find myself kneeling beside Bessie, our hands gripped on the chancel rail. I glance sideways, and see her blue eyes are filled with tears. “Pray God that it is a boy and comes soon,” she whispers to me, trying to smile.

“Amen,” I say. “And healthy.”

“There is no reason, is there, Lady Salisbury, why the queen should not have a boy?”

Stoutly, I shake my head. “No reason at all. And if anyone ever asks you, if anyone at all ever asks you, Bessie, you owe it to Her Grace to say that you know of no reason why she should not have a healthy son.”

She sits back on her heels. “He asks,” she confides. “He does ask.”

I am appalled. “What does he ask?”

“He asks if the queen talks privately to her friends, to you and to her ladies. He asks if she is anxious about bearing a child. He asks if there is some secret difficulty.”

“And what do you tell him?” I ask. I am careful to keep the burn of anger out of my voice.

“I tell him I don’t know.”

“You tell him this,” I say firmly. “Tell him that the queen is a great lady—that’s true, isn’t it?”

Pale with concentration, she nods.

“Tell him that she is a true wife to him—that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes.”

“And that she serves the country as queen and serves him as a loving partner and helpmeet. He could have no better woman at his side, a princess by birth and a queen by marriage.”

“I know she is. I do know.”

“Then, if you know so much, tell him that there is no doubt that their marriage is good in the sight of God as it is before us all, and that a son will come to bless them. But he has to be patient.”

She gives a pretty little moue with her mouth and a shrug of her shoulders. “You know, I can’t tell him all that. He doesn’t listen to me.”

“But he asks you? You just said that he asks you!”

“I think he asks everyone. But he doesn’t listen to anyone, except perhaps the Bishop Wolsey. It’s natural that he should, my lord being so wise and knowing the will of God and everything.”

“At any rate, don’t tell him that his marriage is invalid,” I say bluntly. “I would never forgive you, Bessie, if you said something like that. It would be wicked. It would be a lie. God would never forgive you for such a lie. And the queen would be hurt.”

Fervently, she shakes her head and the pearls on her new headdress bob and shine in the candlelight. “I never would! I love the queen. But I can only tell the king what he wants to hear. You know that as well as I.”

I go back into the confinement chamber and stay with Katherine through her labor until the pains come faster and faster and she hauls on a knotted cord and the midwives throw handfuls of pepper in her face to make her sneeze. She is gasping for breath, the tears pouring down her face, her eyes and nostrils burning with the harsh spice, as she screams in pain and with a rush of blood the baby is born. The midwife pounces on him, hauls him out like a wriggling fish, and cuts the cord. The rocker enfolds him in a pure linen cloth and then a blanket of wool, and holds him up for the queen to see. She is blinded with tears and choking with the pepper and with the pain. “Is it a boy?” she demands.

“A boy!” they tell her, in a delighted chorus. “A boy! A live boy!”

She reaches out to touch his little clenched fists, his kicking feet, though this time, she is afraid to hold him. But he is strong: red in the face, hollering, loud as his father, as self-important as a Tudor. She gives an amazed, delighted little laugh, and holds out her arms. “He is well?”

“He is well,” they confirm. “Small, because he is early, but well.”

She turns to me and gives me the great honor: “You shall tell the king,” she says.

I find him in his rooms, playing cards with his friends Charles Brandon, William Compton, and my son Montague. I am announced just ahead of a scramble of courtiers who were hoping to gather the news from the maids at the doorway and get to him with the first tidings, and he knows at once why I have come to him. He leaps to his feet, his face bright with hope. I see once more the boy I knew, the boy who always hovered between boasting and fearfulness. I curtsey and my beam, as I rise up, tells him everything.

“Your Grace, the queen has been brought to bed of a bonny boy,” I say simply. “You have a son, you have a prince.”

He staggers, and puts his hand on Montague’s shoulder to steady himself. My own son supports his king and is the first to say: “God bless! Praise be!”

Henry’s mouth is trembling, and I remember that despite his vanity he is only twenty-three, and his ostentation is a shield over his fear of failure. I see the tears in his eyes and realize he has been living under a terrible dread that his marriage was cursed, that he would never have a son, and that right now, as people outside the room cheer at the news and his comrades slap him on the back and call him a great man, a bull of a man, a stallion of a man, a man indeed, he is feeling the curse lifting from him.

“I must pray, I must give thanks,” he stammers, as if he does not know what he is saying, he does not know what he should say. “Lady Margaret! I should give thanks, shouldn’t I? I should have a Mass sung at once? This is God’s blessing on me, isn’t it? Proof of His favor? I am blessed. I am blessed. Everyone can see that I am blessed. My house is blessed.”

Courtiers crowd around him. I see Thomas Wolsey elbowing his way through the young men, and then sending a message for the cannons to fire and all the church bells in England to peal, and a thanksgiving Mass to be said in every church. They will light bonfires in the streets, they will serve free ale and roast meats, and the news will go out all around the kingdom that the king’s line is secure, that the queen has given him a son, that the Tudor dynasty will live forever.

“She is well?” Henry asks me over the babble of comment and delighted congratulation. “The baby is strong?”

“She is well,” I confirm. No need to tell him that she is torn, that she is bleeding terribly, that she is almost blinded by the spices they threw in her face and exhausted by the labor. Henry does not like to hear of illness; he has a horror of physical weakness. If he knew the queen was ripped and bleeding, he would never bring himself to her bed again.

“The baby is lusty and strong.” I take a breath and I play my strongest card for the queen. “He looks just like you, sire. He has hair of Tudor red.”

He gives a shout of joy and at once he is jumping round the room like a boy, pounding men on the back, embracing his friends, ebullient as a young tup in the meadow.

“My son! My son!”

“The Duke of Cornwall.” Thomas Wolsey reminds him of the title.

Someone brings in a flask of wine and slops it into a dozen cups. “The Duke of Cornwall!” they bellow. “God bless him! God save the king and the Prince of Wales!”