“And you will watch over the nursery?” Henry calls over his shoulder to me. “Dear Lady Margaret? You will care for and guard my son? You are the only woman in England I would trust to raise him.”

I hesitate. I was to be Lady Governess to the first son, and I am afraid to undertake this again. But I have to consent. If I do not, it looks as if I doubt my abilities, it looks as if I doubt the health of the child whom they are putting into my keeping. All the time, every day of our lives, every minute of every day, we have to act as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing can go wrong, as if the Tudors are under the exceptional blessing of God.

“You could not choose more tender care,” my son Montague says quickly as I hesitate. He gives me a look as if to remind me that I must respond, and promptly.

“I am honored,” I say.

The king himself presses a goblet of wine into my hand. “Dear Lady Margaret,” he says. “You will raise the next King of England.”

And so it is me the nurse calls first, when she lifts the little baby from his golden enamelled crib and finds that he is blue and lifeless. They were in the room next door to the queen’s bedroom; the nursemaid was sitting beside the cradle, watching him, but she had thought that he was very quiet. She put her hand on his soft head and felt no pulse. She put her fingers down inside his lawn nightgown and found him still warm. But he was not breathing. He had just stopped breathing, as if some old curse had gently rested a cool hand over his little nose and mouth, and made an end to the line that killed the princes of York.

I hold the lifeless body as the nurse weeps on her knees before me, crying over and over again that she never took her eyes off him, he made not a sound, there was no way of knowing that anything was wrong—and then I put him back into his ornate crib as if I hope that he will sleep well. Without knowing what to say, I walk through the adjoining door between the nursery and the confinement room where the queen has been washed and bandaged and dressed in her nightgown, ready for the night.

The midwives are turning down the fresh sheets on the big bed, a couple of ladies-in-waiting are seated beside the fire, the queen herself is praying at the little altar at the corner of the room. I kneel beside her and she turns her face to me and sees my expression.

“No,” she says simply.

“I am so sorry.” For a terrible moment I think I am going to vomit, I am so sick to my belly and so filled with horror at what I have to say. “I am so sorry.”

She is shaking her head, wordlessly, like an idiot at the fair. “No,” she says. “No.”

“He is dead,” I say very quietly. “He died in his cradle while he was sleeping. Just a moment ago. I am so sorry.”

She goes white and sways backwards. I give a shout of warning and one of her ladies, Bessie Blount, catches her as she faints. We pick her up and lie her on the bed and the midwife comes to pour a bitter oil onto a cloth and clamps it to her nose and mouth. She chokes and opens her eyes and sees my face. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me that was a terrible dream.”

“It’s true,” I say, and I can feel my own face is wet with tears. “It’s true. I am so sorry. The baby is dead.”

On the other side of the bed I see Bessie’s aghast face as if her worst fears have been confirmed, as she slides to her knees and bows her head in prayer.

The queen lies in her glorious bed of state for days. She should be dressed in her best, reclining on golden pillows, receiving gifts from godparents and foreign ambassadors. But nobody comes, and in any case, she would not see them. She turns her face into her pillow and lies in silence.

I am the only one who can go to her and take her cold hand and say her name. “Katherine,” I whisper as if I am her friend and not her subject. “Katherine.”

For a moment I think she will stay mute, but she moves a little in the bed and looks at me over her hunched shoulder. Her face is etched with pain; she seems far older than her twenty-eight years, she is like a fallen statue of sorrow. “What?”

I pray for a word of encouragement to come to me, for a message of Christian patience, for a reminder that she has to be brave as her mother, that she is a queen and has a destiny laid on her. I think perhaps I might pray with her, or cry with her. But her face like white Carrara marble is forbidding, as she waits for me to find something to say as she lies there, curled up, clenched around her grief.

In the silence I understand that there are no words to comfort her. Nothing can be said that would bring her comfort. But still, there is something that I have to tell her. “You’ve got to get up,” is all I say. “You can’t stay here. You’ve got to get up.”

Everyone wonders, but no one speaks. Or perhaps: everyone wonders, but no one speaks just yet. Katherine is churched and returns to the court and Henry greets her with a sort of coolness that is new to him. He was raised to be a boisterous boy, but she is teaching him sorrow. He was a boy confident of his own good luck, demanding of good fortune, but Katherine is teaching him doubt. Man and boy he has striven to be the best at everything he does; he has delighted in his own strength, ability, and looks. He cannot bear failure in himself or in anyone near him. But now he has been disappointed by her, he has been disappointed by her dead sons, he has even been disappointed by God.

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1514

Katherine sits still on her throne, eating almost nothing, showing an empty smile that fails to illuminate her hollow eyes. After dinner they sit side by side on their thrones to watch the entertainments and Bessie stands beside the king and leans in to hear his whispered comments, and laughs at everything he says, every single thing that he says, in a ripple of girlish laughter as meaningless as birdsong.

The court puts on a Christmas pageant and Bessie is dressed as a lady of Savoy in a blue gown with her face masked. In the dance, she and her companions are rescued by four brave masked knights, and they all dance together, the tall redheaded masked man dancing with the exquisitely graceful young woman. The queen thanks them for a delightful entertainment, and smiles and gives out little gifts, as if there is nothing that can give her more pleasure than seeing her husband dance with his mistress to the acclaim of a drunken court.

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1515

She was always a self-willed child, as passionate and headstrong as her brother. When I hear that she has married for love, against the wishes of the king, I smile, thinking of her mother, my cousin Elizabeth, who also fell in love and swore she would marry her choice, and of her mother who married in secret for love, and of her mother before her who was a royal duchess and married her dead husband’s squire and caused a scandal. Princess Mary comes from three generations of women who believed in pleasing themselves.