Will you write for me to My Lady and ask her if I can come to court? Will you tell her that I am sorry but I cannot seem to manage my household bills and that I am lonely and unhappy here? I want to live in her rooms as her granddaughter, as I should.

I reply and tell her that I am a widow, as she is, and that I too am struggling to pay my way in the world. I say that I am sorry, but I have no influence over My Lady. I will write to her, but I doubt she will be kind to Katherine at my bidding. I don’t say that My Lady said she would never forgive me for refusing to bear witness against Katherine, and that I doubt any word from me, any word from anyone, would make her act kindly to the princess.

Katherine replies quite cheerfully that her duenna, Doña Elvira, is so bad-tempered that she sends her out to the market to haggle with traders and her angry broken English wins them bargains. She writes this as if it is funny, and I laugh aloud when I read her letter and tell her about the quarrel I have with the farrier about the cost of horseshoes.

It is not grief that will deprive me of my wits but hunger. I go round the kitchen under the pretense that there must be no waste; but really I am getting so low that I shall start licking the spoons and scraping the pots.

I turn away as many as I can of the household staff as soon as we get to the end of the quarter at Lady Day. Some of them cry as they leave and I have no quit money to give them. Those who are left have to work harder and some of them don’t know how the work is done. The kitchen maid now has to lay the fire and sweep the grate in my room and she constantly forgets to bring the wood or spills the ash. It’s heavy work for her and I see her struggle with the log basket and I look away. I put myself in charge of the dairy and learn to make cheese and skim milk and send the dairymaid back to her family. I keep the boy in the malthouse but I learn to make ale. My son Henry has to ride out in the fields with the steward and watch them sowing the seed. He comes home afraid that they are scattering it too thickly, that the carefully measured scoops of grain are not covering the ground.

“Then we’ll have to buy more somehow,” I say grimly. “We have to have a good crop or there will be no bread next winter.”

As the evenings get lighter I give up using wax candles altogether, and tell the children they must do all their studying before dusk. We live in the guttering shadows and stink of the rush lights and the tallow drips on the floors. I think that I will have to marry again, but no man of any wealth or position would consider me, and My Lady will not order one of her relations to the task this time. I am a widow of thirty-one years with five young children and growing debts. When I remarry, I will lose all rights over the estates, as they will all go to the king as Henry’s guardian, so I would come to a new husband as a pauper. Very few men would see me as a desirable wife. No man who wants to prosper at the Tudor court would marry a widow with five children of Plantagenet blood. If My Lady the King’s Mother will not make a marriage for me with someone whom she can command, then I cannot see how to raise my children and feed myself.

STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SUMMER 1505

“We could sell Sir Richard’s warhorse?” my steward John Little suggests.

“He’s so old!” I exclaim. “Who would want him? And he served Sir Richard so well for so long!”

“He’s no use to us,” he says. “We can’t use him on the plow, he won’t go between the shafts. I might get a good price for him in Stourbridge. He’s well known as Sir Richard’s horse; people know he’s a good horse.”

“Then everyone will know that I can’t afford to keep him,” I protest. “That I can’t afford to keep him for Henry to ride.”

The steward nods, his eyes on his boots, not looking at me. “Everyone knows that already, my lady.”

I bow my head at this new humiliation. “Take him then,” I say.

I watch the big horse being saddled up. He lowers his proud head for the bridle and stands still while they tighten the girth. He may be old, but his ears come forward when the steward steps off the mounting block to swing a leg over his back and sit in the saddle. The old warhorse thinks he is riding out to battle once more. His neck arches, and he paws the ground as if he is eager to go to work. For a moment I nearly cry out: “No! Keep him! He’s our horse, he’s served my husband well. Keep him for Henry.”

But then I remember that there is nothing to feed him unless I can get help from My Lady the King’s Mother in London, and that the price of the horse will pay for my journey.

We take our own horses and we stay in the guesthouses of the nunneries or abbeys along the way. They are positioned along the road to help pilgrims and wayfarers, and I am comforted every time I see a bell tower on the horizon and know there is a place of refuge, every time I step into a clean lime-washed room and feel the sense of holy peace. One night there is nowhere to go but an inn, and I have to pay for myself, for my lady companion, and for the four men-at-arms. I have spent nearly all my money by the time we see the spires of London coming out of the afternoon mist and hear the dozens of bells tolling for None.

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1505

This palace is like an enclosed village, set inside its own great walls inside the city of London. I know all the twisting alleyways and the little walled gardens, the backstairs and the hidden doorways. This has been my home since childhood. I wash my face and hands and pin on my hood. I brush the dust from my gown and hold my head high as I walk through the little cobbled streets to the great hall and the queen’s rooms.

I am just about to cross the queen’s gardens when I hear someone call my name, and I turn to see Bishop John Fisher, confessor to My Lady, and an old acquaintance of mine. When I was a little girl, he used to come to Middleham Castle to teach us our catechism and hear our confessions. He knew my brother, Teddy, as a small boy, as the heir to the throne; he taught me the psalms when the name in my psalter was Margaret Plantagenet, and I was niece to the King of England.