“Sit beside me,” she says. “Let me watch her feed.”

The woman does as she is ordered. This is a new wet nurse; I couldn’t bear to have the same woman who had fed the previous baby. I wanted everything new: new linen, new swaddling bands; new cradle, new nurse. I wanted nothing to be the same, so I am dreading what happens now, as the queen turns to me and says gravely: “Dear Margaret, will you tell His Grace?”

This is no honor anymore, I think, as I go slowly from the overheated room and step into the cold hall. Unbidden, my son Montague is waiting for me outside. I am so relieved to see him that I could weep. I take his arm.

“I thought you might want someone to walk with?” he asks.

“I do,” I say shortly.

“The baby?”

“Alive. A girl.”

He purses his lips at the thought that we may have to tell the king disagreeable news, and we walk swiftly in silence, down the hall together to the king’s private rooms. He is waiting, Cardinal Wolsey at his side, his companions quiet and anxious. They do not wait with excitement and confidence anymore, cups filled in their hands ready for a toast. I see Arthur among them and he nods to me, his face pale with anxiety.

“Your Grace, I am happy to tell you that you have a daughter,” I say to King Henry.

There is no mistaking the joy that leaps into his face. Anything, as long as he has got a live child on his queen. “She is well?” he demands hopefully.

“She is well and strong. I left her at the wet nurse’s breast and she is feeding.”

“And Her Grace?”

“She is well. Better than ever before.”

He comes towards me and takes my arm to speak quietly to me, so that no one, not even the cardinal following behind, can hear. “Lady Margaret, you’ve had many children . . .”

“Five,” I reply.

“All live births?”

“I lost one in the early months, once. It’s usual, Your Grace.”

“I know. I know. But does this baby look strong? Can you tell? Will she live?”

“She looks strong,” I say.

“Are you sure? Lady Margaret, you would tell me if you had doubts, wouldn’t you?”

I look at him with compassion. How will anyone ever find the courage to tell him anything that does not please him? How will this indulged boy ever learn wisdom in manhood if nobody ever dares to say no to him? How will he learn to judge a liar from a true man if everyone, even the truest, cannot speak a word to him that is not good news?

“Your Grace, I am telling you the truth: she looks well and strong now. What will become of her only God can say. But the queen has been safely delivered of a bonny girl, and they are both doing well this afternoon.”

“Thank God,” he says. “Amen.” He is deeply moved, I can see it. “Thank God,” he says again.

He turns to the waiting court. “We have a girl!” he announces. “Princess Mary.”

Everyone cheers; no one reveals the slightest anxiety. No one would dare to show the slightest doubt. “Hurrah! God save the princess! God save the queen! God save the king!” they all say.

King Henry turns back to me with the question that I am dreading. “And will you be her Lady Governess, my dear Lady Margaret?”

I cannot do it. I really cannot do it this time. I cannot once again lie sleepless, waiting for the gasp of shock from the nursery and the noise of running feet and the knock on my door, the white-faced girl crying that the baby has just stopped breathing, for no reason, for no reason at all, and will I come and see? And who will tell the queen?

My son Montague meets my eyes and nods. He need do nothing more to remind me that we all have to endure things we would prefer to avoid, if we are to keep our titles and our lands and our favored place at court. Reginald has to go far away from his home, Arthur has to smile and play tennis when his back is wrenched from jousting, he has to climb back on a horse which has thrown him and laugh as if he has no fear. Montague has to lose at cards when he would rather not bet, and I have to watch over a baby whose life is unbearably uncertain.

“I shall be honored,” I say, and I make my face smile.

The king turns to Lord John Hussey. “And will you be her guardian?” he asks him.

Lord John bows his head as if overwhelmed by the honor, but when he looks up, he meets my eye, and I see in his face my own silent dread.

We christen her quickly, as if we don’t dare to wait, in the chapel of the Observant Friars nearby, as if we don’t dare to take her farther afield in the cold wintry air. And she is confirmed in her faith in the same service, as if we can’t be sure she will live long enough to make her own vows. I stand sponsor for her confirmation, taking her vows for her as if they will make her safe when the plague winds blow, when the sickly mists rise from the river, when the cold gales rattle the shutters. When I take the holy oil on my forehead and the candle in my hand, I cannot help but wonder if she will live long enough for me to tell her that she was confirmed in the faith of the Church and that I stood proxy for her and prayed desperately for her little soul.

Her godmother, my cousin Catherine, carries her down the aisle, and hands her at the church door to the other godmother, Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. As the ladies file by, each one dipping a little curtsey to the royal baby, the duchess hands her back to me. She is not a sentimental woman, she does not love to hold a baby; I see her brisk nod at her stepdaughter Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. Gently, I put the little princess in the arms of her Lady Mistress, Margaret Bryan, and I walk alongside her, wrapped in ermine against the cold wind blowing down the Thames valley, yeomen of the guard around me, the cloth of estate carried over our regal heads, and all the ladies of the baby’s nursery following me.

It is a moment of greatness for me, even grandeur. I am Lady Governess of the royal baby and heir; I should be relishing this moment. But I can’t revel in it. All I can do, all I want to do, is to go on my knees and pray that this baby lives longer than her poor little brothers.

ENGLAND, SUMMER 1517

“He’s gone on ahead with just a riding court,” my son Montague tells me, leaning on the doorway of my room and watching my maids go one way and another, packing all of our goods into traveling chests. “He’s terrified.”

“Hush,” I say cautiously.

“It’s no secret that he’s sick with fear.” Montague steps inside and closes the door behind him. “He’d admit it himself. He has a holy terror of all diseases but the Sweat is his particular dread.”

“No wonder, since it was his father who brought it in, and it killed his brother Arthur,” I remark. “They called it the Tudor curse even then. They said that the reign had begun in sweat and would end in tears.”

“Well, please God they were wrong,” my son says cheerfully. “Will the queen come with us today?”

“As soon as she’s ready. But she’s making a pilgrimage to pray at Walsingham later in the month. You won’t see her change her plans for the Sweat.”

“No, she doesn’t imagine herself dying with every cough,” he says. “Poor lady. Is she going to pray for another child?”

“Of course.”

“She still hopes for a boy?”

“Of course.”

Reports of the disease grow worse, and worse still in the telling. It is the most terrifying of sicknesses because of its speed. A man at dinnertime, reporting to his household that he is well and strong, and that they are lucky to have escaped, will complain of a headache and heat in the evening and will be dead by sunset. Nobody knows why the disease goes from one place to another, nor why it takes one healthy man but spares another. Cardinal Wolsey takes the disease and we are all prepared to hear of his death, but the cardinal survives it. Henry the king is not comforted by this; he is completely determined to escape even the breath of it.

We stay at Richmond and then one of the servers takes ill. Henry is at once plunged into terror at the thought that a boy under the wing of death handed him his meat; he thinks of the poor victim as an assassin. The whole court packs up to leave. Every head of each service is told to go through his staff and examine each one minutely, demand of every man if he has any symptoms, any heat, any pain, any faintness. Of course, everyone denies that he is ill—nobody wants to be left behind with the dying page boy at Richmond; and besides, the disease comes on so fast that by the time everyone has sworn to good health, the first of them could be taking to their beds.

We rush downriver to Greenwich, where the clean air smells of salt from the sea, and the king insists that the rooms are swept and washed daily and that no one comes too close to him. The king, who is supposed to be blessed with a healing touch, will let no one come near him at all.