I smile as he says her title with such care. “And how do you like being a married man, Your Grace?”

The quick flush on his cheek tells me that he likes her a lot and is embarrassed to own it. “I like it well enough,” he says quietly.

“You deal well together, Arthur?”

The red in his cheek deepens and spreads to his forehead. “She is . . .” He breaks off. Clearly there are no words for what she is.

“Beautiful?” I suggest.

“Yes! And . . .”

“Pleasing?”

“Oh yes! And . . .”

“Charming?”

“She has such . . .” he starts and falls silent.

“I had better see her. Clearly she is beyond describing.”

“Ah, Lady Guardian, you are laughing at me but you will see . . .”

He goes outside to fetch her. I had not realized we were keeping her waiting, and I wonder if she will be offended. After all, she is an Infanta of Spain and raised to be a very grand woman indeed.

As the heavy wooden door opens I get to my feet and Arthur brings her into the room, bows, and steps out. He closes the door. The Princess of Wales and I are quite alone.

My first thought is that she is so slight and so dainty that you would think her a portrait of a princess in stained glass, not a real girl at all. She has bronze-colored hair tucked modestly under a heavy hood, a tiny waist cinched in by a stomacher as big and heavy as a breastplate, and a high headdress draped in priceless lace, which falls to either side and shields her as if she might wear it down over her face like an infidel’s veil. She curtseys to me with her eyes and face downturned, and only when I take her hand and she glances up can I see that she has bright blue eyes and a shy pretty smile.

She is pale with anxiety as I deliver my speech in Latin, welcoming her to the castle, and apologizing for my previous absence. I see her glance around for Arthur. I see her bite her lower lip as if to summon courage, and plunge into words. At once she speaks of the one thing that I would willingly never hear, especially from her.

“I was sorry for the death of your brother, very sorry,” she says.

I am quite astounded that she should dare to speak to me of this at all, let alone that she should do so with frankness and compassion.

“It was a great loss,” I say coolly. “Alas, it is the way of the world.”

“I am afraid that my coming . . .”

I cannot bear for her to apologize to me for the murder that was done in her name. I cut her off with a few words. She looks at me, poor child, as if she would ask how she can comfort me. She looks at me as if she is ready to fall at my feet and confess it as her fault. It is unbearable for me that she should speak of my brother. I cannot hear his name on her lips, I cannot let this conversation continue or I will break down and weep for him in front of this young woman whose coming caused his death. He would be alive but for her. How can I speak calmly of this?

I put out my hand to her to keep her at a distance, to silence her, but she grasps it, and makes a little curtsey. “It’s not your fault,” I manage to whisper. “And we must all be obedient to the king.”

Her blue eyes are drowned in tears. “I am sorry,” she says. “So sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say, to stop her saying another word. “And it was not his fault. Nor mine.”

And then, strangely, we live together happily. The courage that she showed when she faced me and told me that she was sorry for my grief and that she would have wanted to prevent it, I see in her every day. She misses her home terribly; her mother writes only rarely, and then briefly. Katherine is little more than a motherless child in a strange land, with everything to learn: our language, our customs, even our foods are foreign to her, and sometimes, when we sit together in the afternoon, sewing, I divert her by asking her about her home.

She describes their palace, the Alhambra, as if it were a jewel set in a lining of a green garden, placed in the treasure chest of the castle of Granada. She tells me of the icy water that flows in the fountains in the courtyards piped from the mountains of the high sierra, and of the burning sun that bakes the landscape to arid gold. She tells me of the silks that she wore every day, and of the languid mornings in the marble-tiled bathhouse, of her mother in the throne room dispensing justice and ruling the kingdom as an equal monarch with her father, and of their determination that their rule and the law of God should stretch throughout Spain.

“This must all feel so strange to you,” I say wonderingly, looking out of the narrow window to where the light is draining from the dark wintry landscape, the sky going from ash gray through slate gray, to soot gray. There is snow on the hills and the clouds are rolling up the valley, as a scud of rain hammers against the little panes of glass in the window. “It must seem like another world.”

“It is like a dream,” she says quietly. “You know? When everything is different, and you keep hoping and hoping to wake?”

Silently, I assent. I know what it is like to find that everything has changed and you cannot get back to your earlier life.

“If it were not for Arth . . . for His Grace,” she whispers and lowers her eyes to her sewing, “if it were not for him, I would be most unhappy.”

I put my hand over hers. “Thank God that he loves you,” I say quietly. “And I hope that we can all make you happy.”

At once she looks up, her blue eyes seeking mine. “He does love me, doesn’t he?”

“Without any doubt,” I smile. “I have known him since he was a baby and he has a most loving and generous heart. It is a blessing that you two should come together. What a king and queen you will make, some day.”

She has the dazzled look of a young woman very much in love.

“And are there any signs?” I ask her quietly. “Any signs of a child? You do know how to tell if a baby is coming? Your mother or your duenna has talked to you?”

“You need say nothing; my mother told me all about it,” she says with endearing dignity. “I know everything. And there are no signs yet. But I am sure that we will have a child. And I want to call her Mary.”

“You should pray for a son,” I remind her. “A son and call him Henry.”

“A son named Arthur, but first a girl called Mary,” she says, as if she is certain already. “Mary for Our Lady, who brought me safely here and gave me a young husband who could love me. And then Arthur for his father and the England that we will make together.”

“And how will your country be?” I ask her.

She is serious, this is no childish game to her. “There will be no fines for small offenses,” she says. “Justice should not be used to force people into obedience.”

I give the smallest nod of my head. The king’s rapacity in fining his noblemen, even his friends, and binding them over with tremendous debts is eating away at the loyalty of his court. But I cannot discuss it with the king’s heir.

“And no unjust arrests,” she says very quietly. “I think your cousins are in the Tower of London.”

“My cousin William de la Pole has been taken to the Tower, but there is no charge read against him,” I say. “I pray that he has nothing to do with his brother Edmund, a rebel who has run away. I don’t know where he is, nor what he is doing.”

“Nobody doubts your loyalty!” she reassures me.

“I make sure they don’t,” I say grimly. “And I rarely speak to my kinsmen.”

LUDLOW CASTLE, WELSH MARCHES, APRIL 1502

We swear to her that May will be sunny, and we tell her the silly plays and games of May Day: she will open her window at dawn and be greeted with a carol, all the handsome young men will leave peeled wands at her door, and we will crown her Queen of the May and we will teach her how to dance around a maypole.

But, despite our plans and our promises, it is not like that. May is not like that at all. Perhaps it never could have been what we promised; but it was not the weather that failed us, nor the easily invoked joy of a court cooped up for months. It was not the blossoms, nor the fish spawning in the river; the nightingales came and sang, but nobody listened—it was a disaster which none of us could have imagined.

“It’s Arthur,” my husband says to me, forgetting the prince’s many titles, forgetting to knock on my bedroom door, bursting in, scowling with worry. “Come at once, he’s sick.”

I am seated before my mirror, my maid-in-waiting behind me plaiting my hair, with my headdress ready on the stand and my gown for the day hung on the carved wood cupboard door behind her. I jump to my feet, tweaking the plait from her hand, throw my cape over my nightgown, and hastily tie the cords. “What’s the matter?”

“Says he’s tired, says he aches as if he had an ague.”

Arthur never complains of illness, never sends for the physician. The two of us stride from my room down the stairs and across the hall to the prince’s tower and up to his bedroom at the top. My husband pants up the winding stair behind me as I run up the stone steps, round and round, my hand on the cool stone pillar at the center of the spiral.

“Have you called the physician to him?” I throw over my shoulder.

“Of course. But he’s out somewhere. His servant has gone into town to look for him.” My husband steadies himself, one hand against the central stone pillar, one hand on his heaving chest. “They won’t be long.”

We reach Arthur’s bedroom door and I tap on it and go in without waiting for a response. The boy is in bed; his face has a sheen of sweat over it. He is as white as his linen, the ruffled collar of his nightshirt lying against his young face without contrast.

I am shocked but I try not to show it. “My boy,” I say gently, my voice as warm and as confident as I can make it. “Are you not feeling well?”

He rolls his head towards me. “Just hot,” he says through cracked lips. “Very hot.” He gestures to his menservants. “Help me. I’ll get up and sit by the fire.”

I step back and watch them. They turn back the covers and throw his robe around his shoulders. They help him from the bed. I see him grimace as he moves, as if it hurts him to take the two steps to the chair, and when he gets to the fireside he sits down heavily, as if he is exhausted.