“Get ready,” he warns me, and then he swings the horse round and it rears up, terribly high, its head as high as me in the royal box built over the arena, and it crashes its front hooves onto the wall of the box, springs back again, and drops down.

I nearly scream with fright, and then I jump to my feet and applaud. Henry beams at me, loosens the reins, pats the horse’s neck. “Nobody else can do that,” he remarks breathlessly, bringing the horse closer, watching me for my reaction. “Nobody in England can do that but me.”

“I should think not.”

“You don’t think it’s too loud? Will she be frightened?”

Katherine once stood with her mother to face a charge of enemy Arab cavalry, the fiercest horsemen in the world. I smile. “No, she’ll be very impressed, she knows good horsemanship.”

“She’ll never have seen anything like this,” he claims.

“She will,” I contradict him. “The Moors in Andalusia have Arab horses, and they ride wonderfully.”

At once the smile is wiped from his face. He turns a furious look on me. “What?” he demands icily. “What do you say?”

“She will understand how great is your achievement,” I say, the words tumbling out in my haste to redress the offense. “For she knows good horsemanship from her home in Spain, but she will never have seen anything like this. And no man in England can do this. I have never seen a better horse and rider.”

He is uncertain, and pulls on the rein; the horse, sensing the change of his mood, flicks his ear, listening.

“You are like a knight of Camelot,” I say hastily. “Nobody will have seen anything like it since the golden age.”

He smiles at that, and it is almost as if the sun comes out and birds start to sing. “I am a new Arthur,” he agrees.

I ignore the pang I feel at the casual use of the name of the prince we loved, whose little brother is still striving to better him. “You are the new Arthur of the new Camelot,” I repeat. “But where is your other horse, Your Grace? Your lovely black mare?”

“She was disobedient,” he throws over his shoulder as he rides out of the ring. “She defied me. She would not learn from me.”

He turns and gives me his most charming smile, all sunshine once again. I think that he is the most adorable young man as he says lightly: “I sent her for baiting. The hounds killed her. I can’t bear disloyalty.”

It is the greatest joust that I have ever seen, that England has ever seen. The king is everywhere, no scene is complete without him in a new costume. He leads the procession of the Master of the Armory, the trumpeters, the courtiers, the heralds, the court assistants, the poets, the singers, and at last, the long line of jousters. Henry has announced a tournament in which he will take on all comers.

He rides his great gray warhorse and he wears cloth of gold, interleaved with the richest blue velvet, gleaming in the bright spring sunshine as if he were a king newly minted. All over his jacket, his hat, his riding breeches, his trappings are sewn little gold K ’s as if he wants to show the world that he is hers, that she has set her initial all over him. Above his head is the standard he has chosen for this day: Loyall. His tournament name is Coeur Loyall, Henry is Sir Loyal Heart and as Katherine glows with pride he rides his horse around the ring and shows the tricks that he practiced before me, a perfect prince.

We all share her joy, even the girls who would welcome the attentions of the perfect prince themselves. Katherine sits in a throne with the sunlight shining through the cloth of gold canopy making her skin rosy and golden, smiling on the young man whom she loves, knowing that their first child, their son, is safe in his golden cradle.

But only ten days later, they go to pick him up and he is cold, and his little face is blue, and he is dead.

It is as if the world has ended. Henry withdraws to his rooms; the queen’s rooms are stunned and silent. All of the words of comfort that can be given to a young woman who has lost her first child dissolve on the tongue in the face of Katherine’s bleak horror. For day after day no one says anything to her. There is nothing to say. Henry falls into silence, and won’t speak of his lost child; he does not attend the funeral or the Mass. They cannot comfort each other, they cannot bear to be together. This loss in their new marriage is so terrible that Henry cannot comprehend it, cannot try to comprehend it. A darkness spreads over the court.

But even in grief, Katherine and I know that we have to be watchful, all the time. We have to wait for the next girl whom Henry takes to his bed, who will wind her arms around his neck and whisper in his ear that look! see! God does not bless his marriage. It has been only twenty months and yet there have been three tragedies: one miscarriage, one child vanished clear away from the womb, one baby dead in its cradle. Is this not proof, building, growing proof, that the marriage is against the will of God, but she—a virgin of healthy English stock—might give him a son?

“And which of my ladies-in-waiting should I suspect?” Katherine asks me bitterly. “Who? Who should I watch? Lady Maud Parr? She’s a pretty woman. Mary Kingston? Lady Jane Guildford? Lady Elizabeth Boleyn? She’s married of course but why should that prevent her seducing the king? You?”

I am not even offended by her outburst. “The queen has to be served by the most beautiful and wealthiest ladies of the kingdom,” I say simply. “It’s how a court works. You have to be surrounded by beautiful girls, they are here to find a husband, they are determined to shine, they are bound to catch the eye of the courtiers and the king.”

“What can I do?” she asks me. “How can I make my marriage unassailable?”

I shake my head. We both know that the only way she can prove that God has blessed her marriage is to give birth to a live son. Without him, without that little savior, we are all waiting for the moment that the king starts to interrogate God.