“Yes. I am very sorry to tell you,” I say. I take Henry’s cold hand in my own. “You are now the head of this family. Make sure that you guide your brothers and sister well, protect our fortune, serve the king, and avoid malice.”

His dark eyes well up with tears. “I can’t,” he says, his voice quavering. “I don’t know how to.”

“I can do it,” Arthur volunteers. “I can do it.”

I shake my head. “You can’t. You’re the second son,” I remind him. “It’s Henry who’s the heir. Your task is to help and support him, defend him if you have to. And you can do everything, Henry. I will advise and guide you, and we will find a way to advance this family in wealth and greatness—but not too far.”

“Not too far?” Arthur repeats.

“Great under the great king,” Henry says, showing, just as I thought, that he is old enough to do his duty and wise enough already to know that we want to prosper—but not enviably so.

Only then, after my boys have wept a little and gone, do I have time to kneel before my prie-dieu and grieve for the loss of my husband and pray for his immortal soul. I cannot doubt that he will go to heaven, though we will have to find the money from somewhere to have Masses said. He was a good man, loyal as a dog to the Tudors, faithful as a dog to me. Kind, as a strong man of few words is often kind to his children and servants and tenants. I never could have fallen in love with him; but I was always grateful to him and glad of his name. Now that he is dead and I will never see him again, I know that I will miss him. He was a comfort and a shield and a kind husband—and these qualities are rare.

He gave me his name, and death does not take it away from me. Now I am Lady Margaret Pole the widow, as I once was Lady Margaret Pole the wife. But the important thing is that his name is not buried with him. I can keep it. I can hide my true self behind it; even in death he will keep me safe.

I give birth to a baby boy—a son who will never know his father. In the weak moments after they put him in my arms I find I am crying over his little downy head. This is the last gift my husband will ever give me, this is the last child I will ever have. This is my last chance to love an innocent who depends on me, as I loved my brother who depended on me. I kiss his damp little head and I feel his pulse flutter. This is my last, my most precious child. Pray God I can keep him safe.

I come out of confinement to pray at the new memorial that bears the name Sir Richard Pole set under a window at our little church. The king sends me a gift of one hundred fifty-seven nobles for funeral clothes for me and for all the tenants, which—managed carefully—also pays for the feast after the funeral and goes a long way to paying for the memorial stone too. I call our steward John Little to me, to tell him that I am pleased with what he has done.

“And His Grace the king has sent permission for you to borrow one hundred twenty nobles from your son’s estate,” he says. “So we will get through Christmastide, at least.”

“One hundred twenty nobles?” I repeat. It is a help; but it is hardly a princely gift. It is not generous. The Tudors will have to do more than this if they are to keep us warm.

In the meantime, all the money goes the wrong way: from us to them. My boys must become royal wards since their father died while they are still children. This is a disaster for me and for the family. All of the earnings of the estate will go to the king, poured into the royal treasury until my son is a man and can inherit his own—or whatever is left of it after it has been bled by the king’s treasury. If the king wants to cut down every standing tree for timber, he can do so. If he wants to butcher every cow in the field, no one can prevent him. All that I can take is my widow’s dower, a third of the rents and profits—only one hundred twenty nobles, for a whole year! King Henry is offering me a loan from what was once all mine; I can’t feel grateful.

“One hundred twenty nobles only takes us to Christmastide. And what happens after that?” I ask my steward.

He just looks at me. He knows that he is not expected to have an answer to this. He knows that I have no answer. He knows there is none.

STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SPRING 1505

Geoffrey the baby thrives with his wet nurse but I find I am wondering when he can be weaned from her, as she is such an extra expense in the nursery. I cannot let the boys’ tutor go—these are my father’s grandsons, the grandsons of George, Duke of Clarence, the best-read nobleman of an exceptional court; these are Warwick children, they have to be able to read and write in three languages at least. I cannot let this family slide down into ignorance and dirt; but teaching and cleanliness are terribly expensive.

We have always lived off the produce from the home farm and we sell some of our surplus at the local markets. We make cheeses and butter, we harvest fruit, and we salt down meat. Our spare food we send to the local market for sale, any extra grain I sell to the miller, and hay and straw I sell to a local merchant. The mills on the river pay me a fee every time they grind, the local potters pay me for firing their wares in my kiln, and I sell wood from the forest.

But the tail end of winter is the worst time of year; our horses are eating our summer crop of hay and there is no extra to sell, the beasts are eating the straw and if they finish it before the spring grass comes, they will have to be killed for meat and then I will have no livestock. Once the household has been fed there is no surplus food left to sell for cash; indeed, we rely on the tenants giving us our share of their crops, as we cannot grow enough on our own fields.

Princess Katherine writes to condole with me on the loss of my husband. She too has suffered a terrible loss. Her mother wrote to her rarely, and seldom with any warmth, but Katherine never stopped looking for her letters, and missed her every day. Now Isabella of Spain is dead, and Katherine will never see her mother again. Even worse than this, the death of her mother means that her father no longer jointly rules all of Spain, but only his own kingdom of Aragon. His wealth and position in the world have been halved, worse than halved, and his oldest daughter Juana has inherited the throne of Castile from her mother. Katherine is no longer the daughter of the monarchs of Spain, she is the daughter of mere Ferdinand of Aragon—a very different prospect. I am not surprised to read that Prince Harry and his father no longer visit her as they used to do. She survives on little gifts of money from the king and sometimes they are less than she expected, and sometimes the royal exchequer forgets to pay altogether. The king is insisting that her full dowry must be paid by Spain to him before the marriage to Prince Harry can go ahead, and in riposte Katherine’s father Ferdinand is demanding that her widow’s jointure be paid by the king to her, in full and at once.