“Good,” Cecily says. “I think I’ll wear scarlet like you did.”

“You can have my gown,” I promise her. “You can remake it to your size.”

“I can?” She flies to my chest of gowns and flings open the top. “And the wedding linen too?”

“Not the linen,” I stipulate. “But you can have the gown and the headdress.”

She gathers it up in her arms. “Everyone will compare us,” she warns me, her face bright with excitement. “How shall you like it if they say I look better than you in scarlet and black? How shall you like it if they say I am a prettier bride?”

I lie back on the pillows. “D’you know? I shan’t mind at all.”










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, CHRISTMAS 1486

Of course there is an unbearable awkwardness between us. When he last saw me, I was imploring him to let Teddy stay with us; he last saw me held by his mother and pushed into confinement. He did not do as I begged, and Teddy is still imprisoned in the Tower. He is afraid that I am angry with him. I see him glance sideways at me throughout the long prayers of the Wedding Mass, trying to guess at my mood.

“Will you come with me to the nursery when this is over?” he finally says, as the couple say their vows and the bishop raises their hands wrapped in his stole and tells us all that those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder.

I turn a warm face to him. “Yes,” I say. “Of course. I go every day. Isn’t he perfect?”

“Such a handsome boy! And so strong!” he whispers eagerly. “And how do you feel? Are you . . .” He breaks off, embarrassed. “I hope you are fully recovered? I hope it was not too . . . painful?”

I try to look queenly and dignified, but his genuine expression of anxiety and concern prompt me to honesty: “I had no idea it would go on for so long! But my mother was a great comfort to me.”

“I hope you will forgive him for causing you pain?”

“I love him,” I say simply. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful baby. I have them bring him to me all day, every day, till they tell me I will spoil him.”

“I have been going to his nursery in the nighttime, before I go to bed,” he confesses. “I just sit by his crib and watch him sleeping. I can hardly believe that we have him. I keep fearing that he is not breathing and I tell his nurse to lift him and she swears he is all right, and then I see him give a little sigh and know that he is well. She must think I am a complete fool.”

Cecily and Sir John turn towards us all and start to walk, hand in hand, down the short aisle. Cecily is radiant in my red and black gown, her fair hair spread on her shoulders like a golden veil. She is shorter than me and they have taken up the hem. A maid, as I was not on my wedding day, she can lace it tightly, and they have tailored the sleeves so that her husband can see an enticing glimpse of wrist and arm. Beside her, Sir John looks weary, his face lined, grooves under his eyes like an old hound. But he pats her hand on his arm and inclines his head to listen to her.

Henry and I smile on the newly wedded couple. “I have provided a good husband for your sister,” he says to remind me that I am beholden to him, that I should be grateful. They pause when they reach us and Cecily sweeps a triumphant curtsey. I go forwards and kiss her on both cheeks, and I give my hand to her husband. “Sir John and Lady Welles,” I say, speaking the name that was once a byword for treachery. “I hope you will both be very happy.”

We give them the honor of the day and let them go first, before us all, and we follow them out of the chapel. As Henry takes my hand I say: “About Teddy . . .”

The face he turns to me is stern. “Don’t ask,” he says. “I am doing all that I dare for you by allowing your mother to stay at court. I should not even be doing that.”

“My mother? What is my mother to do with this?”

“God alone knows,” he says angrily. “Teddy’s part in the rebellion is nothing to what I hear about her. The rumors I hear and the news that my spies bring me are very bad. I can’t tell you how bad. It makes me sick to my belly to hear what they say. I have done all that I can for you and yours, Elizabeth. Don’t ask me to do more. Not just now.”

“What do they say against her?” I persist.

His face is bleak. “She is at the center of every whisper of disloyalty, she is almost certainly faithless to me, plotting against me, betraying us both, destroying the inheritance of her grandson. If she has spoken to even half the people who have been seen talking to her servants, then she is false, Elizabeth, false in her heart and false in her doings. She gives every sign of putting together rings of people who would rise against us. If I had any sense I would put her on trial for treason and know the truth. It is only for you and for your sake that I tell all the men who come to me with reports that they are all, every one of them, mistaken, all liars, all fools, and that she is true to me and to you.”

I can feel my knees start to buckle, as I look over to where my mother is laughing with her nephew John de la Pole. “My mother is innocent of everything!”

Henry shakes his head. “That’s too great a claim; for I know that she is not. All it shows me is that you are lying too. You have just shown me that you will lie for her, and to me.”

They are bringing in the yule log to burn in the great hearth of the hall of Westminster Palace. It is the trunk of a great tree, a gray-barked ash, many times broader than my arms’ span. It will burn without being extinguished for all the days of Christmas. The jester is dressed all in green, riding astride on it as they drag it in, standing up and trying to balance, falling from it, bounding up again like a deer, pretending to lie before it and rolling away before someone drags it over him. Both the servants and the court are singing carols that have words of the birth of Christ set to a tune and the rhythmic beat of a drum that is older by far. This is not just the Christmas story but a celebration of the return of the sun to the earth, and that is a story as ancient as the earth itself.

My Lady smilingly watches the scene, ready as ever to frown at bawdiness or point a finger at someone who uses the revels as an excuse for bad behavior. I am surprised she has allowed this pagan bringing-in of the green, but she is always anxious to adopt the habits of the former kings of England as if to show that her rule is not that much different from those others—the real kings who went before. She hopes to pass herself and her son off as royal by mimicking our ways.

My newly married sister, Cecily, my cousin Maggie, and my younger sister Anne are among my ladies watching with me, applauding as they wrestle the great tree trunk into the wide hearth. My mother is nearby with Catherine and Bridget at her side. Bridget is clapping her hands and laughing so loudly she can hardly stand. The servants are straining at the ropes that they have tied around the massive trunk, and now the jester has torn off a piece of ivy and is pretending to beat them. Bridget’s knees give way beneath her in her delight and she is nearly crying with laughter. My Lady looks over with a slight frown. The jester’s inventions are supposed to be amusing but not excessively so. My mother exchanges a rueful look with me, but she does not restrain Bridget’s exuberant joy.

As we watch, they finally get the yule log dragged into the fireplace and rolled over into the hot embers, and then the fire boys shovel the red-hot coals around it. The ivy that is binding the trunk crisps, smokes, and flares, and then the whole thing settles into the ashes and starts to glow. A little flicker of flame licks around the bark. The yule log is alight, the Christmas celebrations can begin.