I stand like a child’s doll, being dressed as if I were made of lumpy straw stuffed in a sock, limp in their hands. The gown is darkly magnificent, making my hair shine golden, and my skin gleams coldly white against the rich deep fabric. The door opens and my mother comes in. She is already in her gown of cream, trimmed with green and silver and ribbons, with her hair tied loosely at the back; later she will twist it under her heavy headdress. For the first time, I notice that she has a fine scattering of gray hairs among the blond; she is a golden queen no more.

“You look lovely,” she says, kissing me. “Does he know you are wearing red and black?”

“His mother watched them fit the gown,” I say dully. “She chose the material. Of course he knows. She knows everything and she tells him.”

“They didn’t want green?”

“Lancaster red,” I say bitterly. “Martyrdom red, whore’s red, blood red.”

“Hush,” she commands. “This is your day of triumph.”

At her touch, I find my throat is tightening, and the tears that have been blurring my view all morning spill down on my cheeks. Gently, she pushes them away with the heel of her hand, one cheek and then the other. “Now stop,” she orders softly. “There is nothing that can be done but obey and smile. Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. The main thing is that we always, we always go on.”

“We, the House of York?” I ask her skeptically. “For this wedding dissolves York into Tudor. This is no victory for us, but our final defeat.”

She smiles her secretive smile. “We, the daughters of Melusina,” she corrects me. “Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age, I didn’t know whether she could summon up a storm or whether it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a straight road towards it.

“It doesn’t matter if you call it magic or determination. It doesn’t matter if you make a spell or a plot. You have to make up your mind what you want, and have the courage to set your heart on it. You will be Queen of England, your husband is the king. Through you, the Yorks regain the throne of England that is their right. Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.”

“I have lost the man I love,” I say bitterly. “And this very day I am to marry the man who killed him. I don’t think I will ever walk to where I want to be. I don’t think that place exists in England anymore, I don’t think that place exists in this world anymore.”

She could almost laugh aloud in her easy confidence. “Of course you think that now! Today you are to marry a man that you despise; but who knows what will happen tomorrow? I can’t foretell the future. You were born at the very heart of troubled times. Now you will marry one king, and perhaps you will see him challenged, and perhaps you will see him fall. Perhaps you will see Henry go down in the mud and die under the hooves of a traitor army. How can I know? No one can. But one thing I do know: today you can marry him and become Queen of England. You can make peace where he has made war. You can protect your friends and family and put a York boy on the throne. So go to your wedding with a smile.”

He is standing at the chancel steps when I come in through the west door of Westminster Abbey to a sudden shout of silver trumpets. I walk alone; one of the ironies of this wedding is that if there was a man of my family to escort me, then Henry would not be King of England and waiting for me with a shy smile on his face. But my father the king is dead, my two York uncles are dead, my little brothers Edward and Richard are missing, presumed dead. The only York boy left for sure is little Edward of Warwick, who bobs his head to me in a funny regal gesture, as if granting his permission as I walk past the chairs of state where he stands, guarded by his sister, Margaret.

Ahead of me Henry is a blaze of gold. His mother has decided to sacrifice elegance for ostentation, and he is wearing a complete suit of cloth of gold as if he is a newly minted statue, a new Croesus. She had thought he would look regal, a gilded god, and that I would look dull and dark and modest. But against his tawdry brightness my dark black and red gown glows with quiet authority. I can see his mother looking crossly from him to me, and puzzling as to why I seem royal and he looks like a mountebank.

The gown is cut very full with a lot of material gathered at the front, and so nobody can yet see that my belly is bigger. I am a full month into my time, possibly more; but only the king, his mother, and my mother know. I render a silent prayer that they have told nobody.

The archbishop is waiting for us, his prayer book open, his old face smiling down as we walk towards him to the chancel steps. He is my kinsman, Thomas Bourchier, and his hands tremble as he takes my hand and places it in Henry’s warm grip. He crowned my father nearly twenty-five years ago, and he crowned my mother, he crowned my darling Richard and his then-wife, Anne, and, if the baby I am carrying proves to be a son, then no doubt he will baptise the child Arthur and then crown me.

His round, lined face shines on me with simple goodwill as I stand before him. He would have performed my wedding service with Richard, and I would have stood here in a white gown trimmed with white roses and been married and crowned in one beautiful ceremony and been a beloved bride and a merry queen.

As his kind eyes fall on my face I can feel myself slipping into a reverie, almost fainting, as if I have entered one of my dreams, standing here at the chancel steps on my wedding day, just as I hoped I would be. In a daze, I take Henry’s hand and repeat the words that I thought I would say to another man. “I, Elizabeth, take thee, H . . . H . . . H . . .” I stumble. It is as if I cannot speak this wrong name, I cannot wake to this awkward reality.

It is awful, I cannot say another word, I cannot catch my breath, the terrible fact that I am not pledging myself to Richard has stuck in my throat. I am starting to choke, in a moment I will retch. I can feel myself sweating, I can feel myself sway, my legs weakening under me. I cannot bring myself to say the name of the wrong man, I cannot make myself promise myself to anyone but Richard. I try again. I get as far as “I, Elizabeth, take thee . . .” before I choke into silence. It is hopeless, I cannot say it. I give a little whooping cough and raise my eyes to his face. I cannot help myself, I hate him like an enemy, I cannot stop myself dreaming of his enemy, I cannot say his name, I cannot possibly marry him.

But Henry, prosaic and real, understands exactly what is happening, and gives me a sharp corrective pinch with his fingers in the soft palm of my hand. He uses his nails, he digs into my flesh, I yelp at the pain, and his hard brown gaze emerges from the mist and I see his scowl. I snatch at a gasp of air.

“Say it!” he mutters furiously.

I master myself and say again, correctly this time, “I, Elizabeth, take thee, Henry . . .”

The wedding banquet is held at Westminster Palace and I am served on bended knee as if I were a queen, though My Lady the King’s Mother mentions once or twice, as if in passing, that although I am the king’s wife, I am not yet crowned. After the feast there is dancing and a little play put on by some skilled actors. There are tumblers, music from the choristers, the king’s fool tells some bawdy jokes, and then my mother and sisters come to escort me to the bedroom.

It is warm with a long-established fire of smoldering logs and scented pinecones in the hearth, and my mother gives me a drink of specially brewed wedding ale.

“Are you nervous?” Cecily asks, her tone as sweet as mead. We still don’t have a date for her wedding day, and she is anxious that no one forget that she must come next. “I am sure that I will be nervous, on my wedding night. I shall be a nervous bride, I know, when it is my turn.”

“No,” I say shortly.

“Why don’t you help your sister into bed?” my mother suggests to her, and Cecily turns back the covers and gives me an upward push into the high bed. I settle myself against the pillows and swallow down my apprehension.

We can hear the king and his friends approaching the door. The archbishop comes in first, to sprinkle holy water and pray over the marriage bed. Behind him comes Lady Margaret, a big ivory crucifix tightly in her hands, and behind her comes Henry, looking flushed and smiling among a band of men who slap him on the back and tell him that he has won the finest trophy in all of England.

One freezing look from Lady Margaret warns everyone that there are to be no bawdy jests. The page boy turns back the covers, the king’s men in waiting take off his thick bejeweled robe, Henry in his beautifully embroidered white linen nightshirt slips between the sheets beside me, and we both sit up and sip our wedding ale like obedient children at bedtime while the archbishop finishes his prayers and steps back.

Reluctantly, the wedding guests go out, my mother gives me a quick farewell smile and shepherds my sisters away. Lady Margaret is the last to leave and as she goes to the door I see her look back at her son, as if she has to stop herself from coming back in to embrace him once more.

I remember that he told me of all the years when he went to sleep without her kiss or her blessing, and that she loves now to see him to his bed. I see her hesitating at the threshold as if she cannot bear to leave him, and I give her a smile, and I stretch out my hand and rest it lightly on her son’s shoulder, a gentle proprietorial touch. “Good night, Lady Mother,” I say. “Good night from us both.” I let her see me take her son’s fine linen collar in my fingers, the collar she embroidered herself in white-on-white embroidery, and I hold it as if it were the leash of a hunting dog who is wholly mine.

For a moment she stands watching us, her mouth a little open, drawing a breath, and as she stays there, I lean my head towards Henry as if I am going to rest it on his shoulder. He is smiling proudly, his face flushed, thinking that she is enjoying the sight of her son, her adored only son, in his wedding bed, a beautiful bride, a true princess, beside him. Only I understand that the sight of me, with his shoulder under my cheek, smiling in his bed, is eating her up with jealousy as if a wolf had hold of her belly.