“My brother, the king,” I say flatly.

“Better that you and I never speak such words,” she says. “But I am glad to have seen the day that you could tell me that England is waiting for the boy that I sent out into the darkness—not knowing what might become of him, not even knowing if the little boat would go safely downriver. My heart has ached for him, Elizabeth, and I have spent many, many nights on my knees for him, hoping for his safety, knowing nothing for sure. I pray that your boy never leaves you and you never have to watch him go, not knowing if he will come back again.” She sees my anxious face and her beautiful smile gleams out at me. “Ah, Elizabeth! Here you are, well and happy, two boys in your nursery and a new baby in your belly, and you tell me that my son is coming home—how can I be anything but filled with joy?”

“If this boy is your son,” I remind her.

“Of course.”










GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, JUNE 1492

Henry arrives home just before I enter my confinement, and presides over the great dinner that celebrates my departure from court for the long six weeks before the birth and then the month before I am churched and can come back.

“May I send for my mother?” I ask him as we walk together towards the confinement chamber.

“You can ask her,” he concedes. “But she’s not well.”

“The abbot wrote to you? And not to me? Why did he not write at once to me?”

His quick grimace tells me that he has learned this not in a letter but as a secret from his spy network. “Oh,” I say, realizing. “You are watching her? Even now?”

“I have every reason to think that she is at the very center of the plotting of the Irish and the French,” he says quietly. “And it won’t be the first time she’s called the doctor just to send a secret message.”

“And the boy?” I ask.

Henry makes a small grimace; I can see him swallow down his apprehension. “Slipped away. Again. He didn’t trust Pregent Meno, his former friend; he didn’t take the bait I sent him. He’s gone somewhere. I don’t even know where. Probably France. He’s somewhere out there.” He shakes his head. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll find him. And I won’t talk of this with you when you are about to go into confinement. Go in with a quiet heart, Elizabeth, and give me a handsome son. Nothing keeps the boy more firmly from our door than our own princes. You can send for your mother if you wish, and she can stay with you till after the birth.”

“Thank you,” I say. He takes my hand and kisses it, then, with the whole court watching, he kisses me gently on the mouth. “I love you,” he says quietly into my ear. I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. “I wish for both of us that we could be at peace.”

For a moment I almost hesitate, wanting to tell him what I know, wanting to warn him that my mother is radiant with hope, certain that she will see her son again. For a moment I want to confess to him that I sent a page boy into the Tower in place of my brother, that among the princes who rise against him, the legion of princes, there may be one who is a true prince—the little boy who set out from sanctuary in a cloak too big for him, who had to sail away from his mother in a little boat on the dark water, who will come back to England and take the throne from our son if he can, whose claims we will have to face together someday.

Almost I speak; but then I see the pale guarded face of his mother among the smiling court, and I think that I dare not tell this suspicious family that the thing they fear most in the world is indeed true, and that I played a part in it.

“God bless you,” he says, and whispers again: “I love you.”

“And I you,” I say, surprising myself. And I turn and go into the shadowy room.

I write to my mother that evening and I receive a brief reply to say that she will come when she is well, but that just now the pain in her heart is a little worse and she is too weary to travel. She asks if Bridget can join her in the convent, and I send my little sister at once, telling her to bring my mother to court as soon as she is well enough. I pass my days in the shaded rooms of my confinement apartment, sewing and reading and listening to calming music from the lutenists who are kept on the other side of the screen, for the benefit of my modesty and of theirs. I am bored in the darkened rooms and it is hot and stuffy. I sleep lightly at night and doze during the day so that I think I am dreaming, floating between wakefulness and sleep, when one night I am awakened by a clear sweet sound, like a flute, or like a chorister singing one note very softly outside my window.

I slip from my bed and lift the tapestry to look out, almost expecting to see carolers outside my window, the sound is so pure, echoing against the stone walls; but all there is to see is a waning moon, curved like a horseshoe floating in a sea of stormy dark-headed clouds which blow past it and over it, though the thick heads of the trees are still and there is no wind. The river gleams like silver in the moonlight, and still I hear the sweet clear noise like plainsong, soaring into the vault of the sky like a choir in a church.

For a moment only I am bewildered, then I recognize the sound, I remember the song. This is the noise that we heard when we were in sanctuary and my brothers disappeared from the Tower. My mother told me then that this is the song the women of our family hear when there is to be a death of one they love very dearly, one of the family. It is the banshee calling her child home, it is the goddess Melusina, the founder of our family, singing a lament for one of her children. As soon as I hear it, as soon as I understand it, I know that my mother, my beloved, beautiful, mischievous mother, is dead. And only she knew, when she told me that she was certain that she would see Richard, whether she meant she would see him on earth or whether she was certain they would meet in heaven.

Henry breaks his own mother’s rules about the confinement of the queen, and comes himself to the screen in my chamber to tell me of her death. He is inarticulate, struggling with his duty to tell me and his fear of causing me grief. His face is fixed, expressionless, he is so anxious that I shall see no trace of the huge relief that he feels that such a dangerous opponent is out of his way. Of course, it is only natural for him to rejoice that if a new pretender emerges from the darkness of the past, at least my mother is not here to recognize him. But for me this is nothing but loss.