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.

“Would you fetch Her Grace the princess for me?” he asks. “I must tell her I cannot ride out with her today.”

“I can tell her myself . . .”

“I want to see her.”

I don’t argue with him, but go down the stairs of his tower, across the hall, and up the stairs of her tower to her rooms and ask her to come to her husband. She is at her morning studies, reading English, frowning over her book. She comes at once, smiling and expectant; her duenna, Doña Elvira, follows with one fierce look at me, as if to ask: What is wrong. What has gone wrong in this cold, wet country now? How have you English failed again?

The princess follows me through Arthur’s great presence chamber, where there are half a dozen men waiting to see the prince. They bow as she goes by and she walks through with a little smile to right and left, a gracious princess. Then she enters into Prince Arthur’s bedroom and the brightness drains from her face.

“Are you ill, my love?” she asks him at once.

He is hunched in his chair at the fireside; my husband, agonized as an anxious hound, stands behind him. Arthur puts out his hand to stop her coming any closer, murmuring so low that I cannot hear what he says. She turns at once to me and her face is shocked.

“Lady Margaret, we must call the prince’s physician.”

“I have sent my servants to find him already.”

“I don’t want a fuss,” Arthur says immediately. From childhood he has hated being ill and being nursed. His brother Harry revels in attention, and loves to be ill and cosseted; but Arthur always swears there is nothing wrong.

There is a tap on the door and a voice calls out: “Dr. Bereworth is here, Your Grace.”

Doña Elvira takes it upon herself to open the door and as the doctor comes in, the princess goes towards him with a ripple of Latin questions too quick for him to understand. He looks to me for help.

“His Grace is unwell,” I say simply. I step back and he sees the prince rise from his chair, staggering with the effort, all color drained from his face. I see the doctor recoil when he sees Arthur, and from his aghast look I instantly know what he is thinking.