In a moment I am in her arms and she is hugging me and then stepping back to look at my face, and my big belly, and my swollen hands.

“You’ve taken all your rings off,” she remarks.

“They were too tight,” I say. “And my ankles are as fat as my calves.”

She laughs at that. “That will all be better when the baby comes,” she says, and presses me down to the day bed, sits at the end of it, takes my feet into her lap, and rubs them firmly with her strong hands. She strokes the soles, pulling gently at the toes until I almost purr with pleasure and she laughs at me again.

“You will be hoping for a boy,” she says.

“Not really.” I open my eyes and meet her gray gaze. “I am hoping that the baby is well and strong. And I would love a little girl. Of course we need a boy . . .”

“Perhaps a girl now, and a boy next,” she suggests. “King Henry is still kind to you? At Christmas he looked like a man in love.”

I nod. “He’s been most tender.”

“And My Lady?”

I make a face. “Most attentive.”

“Ah well, I’m here now,” my mother says, acknowledging that no one can outmatch My Lady the King’s Mother but herself. “Does she come in here for her meals?”

I shake my head. “She dines with her son. When I am in confinement she takes my place at the high table in the court.”

“Let her have her moment of glory,” my mother counsels. “And we’ll eat better in here without her. Who do you have as your ladies-in-waiting?”

“Cecily, Anne, and my cousin Margaret,” I say. “Though Cecily will do nothing for anyone as she is with child herself. And of course I have the king’s kinswomen, and those his mother insists that I keep about me.” I lower my voice. “I am sure that they report to her everything I do and say.”

“Bound to. And how is Maggie? And her poor little brother?”

“She’s allowed to visit him,” I say. “And she says that he is well enough. He has tutors now and a musician. But it’s no life for a boy.”

“Perhaps if Henry gets a second heir he’ll let poor Teddy out,” my mother says. “I pray for that poor boy, every night of his life.”

“Henry can’t let him out while he fears that the people might rise up for a duke of York,” I say. “And even now there are constant uprisings in the country.”

She does not ask me who is rising, or what they are saying. She does not ask me which counties. She goes to the window and draws back a corner of the thick tapestry and looks out as if she has no interest, and from this, I know that Henry is wrong and that my mother has not shot her last bolt of rebellion. On the contrary, she is in the thick of it again. She knows more than I do, she probably knows more than Henry does.

“What’s the point of it?” I ask impatiently. “What’s the point of going on and on causing trouble, while men risk their lives and have to run away to Flanders with a price on their heads? Families are ruined and mothers lose their sons just as you did, women like my aunt Elizabeth, bereft of her son John, her next boy under suspicion. What d’you hope to achieve?”

She turns and her expression is as tender and as steadfast as ever. “I?” she says with her limpid smile. “I achieve nothing. I am just an old grandmother living in Bermondsey Abbey, glad of a chance to visit my darling daughter. I think of nothing but my soul and my next dinner. Causing no trouble at all.”










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, 28 NOVEMBER 1489

“My son commands that you honor me with naming Her Grace the Princess for me.” The sudden appearance of Lady Margaret jolts me back to the real world and behind her I see my mother folding linen and bowing her head and trying not to laugh.

“What?” I ask. I am still hazy with the birthing ale and with the magic that my mother manages to weave, so that pain recedes and the time passes.

“I shall be very glad to be her name-giver.” Lady Margaret pursues her own thought. “And it is so like my son to honor me. I only hope that your boy Arthur is as good and as loving a son to you, as mine is to me.”

My mother, who had two royal sons who adored her, turns away and puts the linen into a chest.

“Princess Margaret of the House of Tudor,” My Lady says, savoring the sound of her own name.

“Is it not vanity, to name a child after yourself?” my mother inquires, dulcet from the corner of the room.

“She is named for my saint,” Lady Margaret replies, not at all disconcerted. “It is not for my own glory. And besides, it is your own daughter who chooses the name. Is it not, Elizabeth?”

“Oh yes,” I say obediently, too tired to argue with her. “And the main thing is that she is well.”

“And beautiful,” my beautiful mother remarks.

Because so many have the pox in London, we don’t hold a big christening, and I am churched privately and return to my rooms and to the life of the court without a great feast. I know also that Henry is not going to waste money on celebrating the birth of a princess. He would have had a public holiday and wine flowing in the public fountains for another boy.

“I’m not disappointed in a girl,” he assures me as he meets me in the nursery and I find him with the precious baby in his arms. “We need another boy, of course, but she is the prettiest, daintiest little girl that was ever born.”

I stand at his shoulder and look into her face. She is like a little rosebud, like a petal, hands like little starfish and fingernails like the tiniest shells ever washed up by a tide.

“Margaret for my mother,” Henry says, kissing her white-capped little head.

My cousin Maggie steps forwards to take the baby from us. “Margaret for you,” I whisper to her.










GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, JUNE 1491

“We’ll call him Henry,” he declares, as the boy is put into his arms when he visits me, a week after the birth.