I shake my head. I cannot tell her that I am sick of London, and sick of the court, and sick of the rule of her husband and his overbearing mother.

“Very well,” she says, understanding all of this. “And will you go to Ludlow as soon as you are up and about again? And join them there?”

She prefers me to be at Ludlow with her boy Arthur. My husband is his guardian in that distant castle, and it comforts her to know that I am there too.

“I’ll go as soon as I can,” I promise her. “But you know Sir Richard will keep your boy safe and well whether I am there or not. He cares for him as if he were a prince of pure gold.”

My husband is a good man, I never deny it. My Lady the King’s Mother chose well for me when she made my marriage. She only wanted a man who would keep me from public view, but she happened upon one who cherishes me at home. And she got a bargain. She paid my husband the smallest possible fee on our wedding day; I could almost laugh even now, to think what they gave him to marry me: two manors, two paltry manors, and a little tumbling-down castle! He could have demanded far more; but he has always served the Tudors for nothing more than their thanks, trotted behind them only to remind them that he was on their side, followed their standard wherever it might lead without counting the cost or asking questions.

Early in his life he put his trust in Lady Margaret Beaufort, his kinswoman. She convinced him, as she convinced so many, that she would be a victorious ally but a dangerous enemy. As a young man he called on her intense family feeling and put himself into her keeping. She swore him to the cause of her son and he, and all her allies, risked their lives to bring her son to the throne and call her by the title she invented for herself: My Lady the King’s Mother. Still, even now, even in unassailable triumph she clutches at cousins, terrified of unreliable friends and fearsome strangers.

I look at my cousin the queen. We are so unlike the Tudors. They married her to My Lady’s son, the king, Henry, and only after they had tested her fertility and her loyalty for nearly two years, as if she were a breeding bitch that they had on approval, did they crown her as his queen—though she was a princess at birth and he was born very far from the throne. They married me to My Lady’s half cousin Sir Richard. They required us both to deny our breeding, our childhoods, our pasts, to take their name and swear fealty, and we have done so. But even so, I doubt they will ever trust us.

Elizabeth, my cousin, looks over to where the young Prince Arthur, her son, is waiting for his horse to be led from the stables. “I wish all three of you would stay.”

“He has to be in his principality,” I remind her. “He is Prince of Wales, he has to be near Wales.”

“I just . . .”

“The country is at peace. The King and Queen of Spain will send their daughter to us now. We will come back in no time, ready for Arthur’s wedding.” I do not add that they will only send the young Infanta now that my brother is dead. He died so that there was no rival heir; the Infanta’s carpet to the altar will be as red as his blood. And I shall have to walk on it, in the Tudor procession, and smile.

“There was a curse,” she says suddenly, drawing close to me and putting her mouth to my ear so that I can feel the warmth of her breath against my cheek. “Margaret, I have to tell you. There was a curse.” She puts her hand in mine and I can feel her tremble.

“What curse?”

“It was that whoever took my brothers from the Tower, whoever put my brothers to death, should die for it.”

Horrified, I pull back so that I can see her white face. “Whose curse? Who said such a thing?”

The shadow of guilt that crosses her face tells me at once. It will have been her mother, the witch Elizabeth. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a murderous curse from that murderous woman. “What did she say exactly?”

She slips her hand through my arm and draws me to the stable gardens, through the arched doorway, so that we are alone in the enclosed space, the leafless tree spreading its boughs over our heads.

“I said it too,” she admits. “It was my curse as much as hers. I said it with my mother. I was only a girl, but I should have known better . . . but I said it with her. We spoke to the river, to the goddess . . . you know! . . . the goddess who founded our family. We said: “Our boy was taken when he was not yet a man, not yet king—though he was born to be both. So take his murderer’s son while he is yet a boy, before he is a man, before he comes to his estate. And then take his grandson too and when you take him, we will know by his death that this is the working of our curse and this is payment for the loss of our son.’ ”

I shiver and gather my riding cape around me as if the sunlit garden were suddenly damp and cold with an assenting sigh from the river. “You said that?”

She nods, her eyes dark and fearful.

“Well, King Richard died, and his son died before him,” I assert boldly. “A man and his son. Your brothers disappeared while in his keeping. If he was guilty and the curse did its work, then perhaps it is all done, and his line is finished.”

She shrugs. No one who knew Richard would ever think for a moment that he had killed his nephews. It is a ridiculous suggestion. He devoted his life to his brother, he would have laid down his life for his nephews. He hated their mother and he took the throne, but he would never have hurt the boys. Not even the Tudors daresay more than to suggest such a crime; not even they are bare-faced enough to accuse a dead man of a crime he would never have committed.

“If it was this king . . .” My voice is no more than a whisper, and I hold her so close that we could be embracing, my cloak around her shoulders, her hand in mine. I hardly dare to speak in this court of spies. “If it was his order that killed your brothers . . .”

“Or his mother,” she adds very low. “Her husband had the keys of the Tower, my brothers stood between her son and the throne . . .”

We shudder, hands clasped as tight as if My Lady might be stealing up behind us to listen. We are both terrified of the power of Margaret Beaufort, mother to Henry Tudor.

“All right, it’s all right,” I say, trying to hold back my fear, trying to deny the tremble of our hands. “But Elizabeth, if it was they who killed your brother, then your curse will fall on her son, your own husband, and on his son also.”

“I know, I know,” she moans softly. “It’s what I have been afraid of since I first thought it. What if the murderer’s grandson is my son: Prince Arthur? My boy? What if I have cursed my own boy?”

“What if the curse ends the line?” I whisper. “What if there are no Tudor boys, and in the end nothing but barren girls?”

We stand very still as if we have been frozen in the wintry garden. In the tree above our heads a robin sings a trill of song, his warning call, and then he flies away.

“Keep him safe!” she says with sudden passion. “Keep Arthur safe in Ludlow, Margaret!”

STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, SPRING 1500

He rolls his eyes as any boy will do when a woman fusses over him, but he ducks his head in obedience and then turns and vaults onto his horse, gathering the reins and making it curvet and dance.

“And don’t show off,” I order. “And if it rains, get into shelter.”

“We will, we will,” my husband says. He smiles down at me kindly. “I’ll guard him, you know that. You take care of yourself, it’s you who has work to do this month. And send me the news the moment that the child is born.”

I put one hand over my big belly, feeling the baby stir, and I wave to them. I watch them as they go south down the red clay road to Kidderminster. The ground is frozen hard; they will make good time on the narrow tracks that wind between the patchwork of frosty rust-colored fields. The prince’s standards go before him, his men-at-arms in their bright livery. He rides beside my husband, the men of his household around them in tight protective formation. Behind them come the pack animals carrying the prince’s personal treasures, his silver plate, his gold ware, his precious saddles, his enameled and engraved armor, even his carpets and linen. He carries a fortune in treasure wherever he goes; he is the Tudor prince of England and served like an emperor. The Tudors shore up their royalty with the trappings of wealth as if they hope that playing the part will make it real.