The duke’s father was executed for treason against King Richard, mine for treason against King Edward. Perhaps treason runs in our veins with the royal blood and it would be wise to make sure that no one remembers it.

“Oh, it’s not polite,” he concedes. “It’s true, of course. But not polite in me, as a host. But I think I have shown him what I wanted him to see. He has seen how a great lord of England lives. Not riding his horse up the stairs like a child, not throwing eggs at his tenants, not fooling like an idiot and playing all day, not promising love to alehouse maids, and sending a well-born mistress into hiding to bear a child as if one was ashamed of dirty doings.”

I can’t argue with that. “He is contradictory. He always was.”

“Vulgar,” the duke says under his breath.

We come to the outskirts of the courtiers and people turn and bow low to us, standing back so that we can see the king, who is just about to draw the bow. Henry is like a beautifully wrought statue of an archer, poised, his weight a little back, his body a long, lean line from curly russet head to outstretched leg. We stand in attentive silence as His Grace bends the heavy longbow, pulls back the string, takes careful aim, and gently releases the arrow.

It flies through the air with a hiss and clips the central bull in the target, not midcenter, but just on the edge, close—not perfect, but very close. Everyone bursts into enthusiastic applause; the queen smiles and takes up a little gold chain, ready to award it to her husband.

Henry turns to my cousin. “Could you do better?” he shouts triumphantly. “Could anyone do better?”

I grip the duke’s hand before he can step forward and take up a bow and arrow. “I am very sure he cannot,” I say, and the duke smiles and says: “I doubt that anyone could outshoot Your Grace.”

Henry gives a little crow of delight and then kneels before the queen, looking up at her and beaming as she bends down to put the gold chain of victory around his neck. She kisses him on the mouth, and he puts up his hands and gently holds her face for a moment, as if he were in love with her, or at any rate, in love with the picture that they make: the young handsome man on his knee to his wife, his thick copper hair curling under her caress.

That night there is a masque, performed in the new way, with the actors coming in disguised, playing a scene and then inviting members of the court to dance with them. The king is wearing a mask over his face and a great hat, but everyone knows him at once by his height, and by the deference of the players around him. He is delighted when we all pretend that we think he is a stranger and are amazed at the grace of his dancing, and his charm. When the players break from their circle and mingle with the court, all the ladies-in-waiting flutter as he comes near to them. He chooses Elizabeth Carew to dance. Now that Bessie is away, there is an opportunity for another pretty girl who cares more for gifts than her good name.

I am standing behind the queen’s chair when I see a small disturbance at the end of the great hall, through the heat haze of the central fire, which the duke has proudly retained here at Penshurst, keeping the old ways in his grand hall. Someone is talking urgently to one of Cardinal Wolsey’s men, and then the message is passed from one to another down the hall, until it reaches the lawyer Thomas More, who leans over the fat red shoulder and whispers in the attentive ear.

“Something has happened,” I say quietly to the queen.

“Find out,” she replies. I step back from her chair into the shadows of the hall and go—not to the cardinal, who has kept his seat and his bland smile, beating time to the dance as if he has heard nothing—but out of the great hall and across the courtyard, where the stable boy is holding the messenger’s steaming horse, and another is taking off the sweaty saddle.

“He looks hot,” I remark, walking past as if on my way to somewhere else.

They both bow low to me. “Nearly foundered,” complains one lad. “I wouldn’t ride a beauty like this so hard.”

I hesitate and pat the horse’s damp neck. “Poor boy. Did he have to come far?”

“From London,” the lad says. “But the messenger is in a worse state—he rode all the way from Essex.”

“That is a long way,” I agree. “It’ll be for the king, then.”

“It is. But worth the effort. He said he would get a gold noble at the very least.”

I laugh. “Well, you will have to reward the poor horse,” I say, and stroll past.

I turn as soon as I am out of sight and walk through the little courtyard at the side of the great hall, entering through the side door with a nod to the guards. I find Thomas More at the back of the hall, watching the dancing. He smiles and bows to me.

“So Bessie Blount has a boy,” I assert.

He has not been long enough at court to learn to veil his honest brown eyes. “Your ladyship . . . I cannot say,” he stammers.

I smile at him. “You don’t need to say,” I tell him. “Indeed, you didn’t say,” and I return to my place beside the queen before anyone notices that I have gone.

“It’s news from Bessie Blount,” I say to her. “Compose yourself, Your Grace.”

She smiles and leans forward to clap her hands in time with the music as the king steps into the center of the circle, puts his hands on his hips, and dances a rapid jig, his feet pounding the ground.

“Tell me,” she says over the shouts of applause.

“She must have had a boy,” I say. “The messenger was counting on a reward. The king would only pay for news of a boy. And Wolsey’s man Thomas More did not deny it. He’ll never make a courtier, that man, he can’t lie at all.”

Her fixed smile never wavers. Henry twirls around at the burst of applause that greets the end of his dance and sees his wife jumping to her feet in her pleasure at his performance. He bows to her and leads another girl into the ring.

She sits down again. “A boy,” she says flatly. “Henry has a live son.”

GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, SPRING 1520

Bessie comes out of confinement and finds herself promptly churched and married off to Cardinal Wolsey’s ward, young Gilbert Tailboys, whose father is so weak in the head that he cannot protect his son from a wife who is used goods. Just as the queen foresaw, the king does not return to his former lover, as if birth has given him a distaste for her. As he matures the king seems to be developing a taste for either notorious beauties or unspoiled girls.

Queen Katherine says nothing: nothing about Bessie, nothing about Henry Fitzroy, nothing about Mary Boleyn, the daughter of my steward Sir Thomas, who now comes to court from France, and attracts attention for her fair prettiness. She is an inconsequential little thing, newly married to William Carey, who seems to enjoy the court’s admiration of his charming wife. The king singles her out, asks her to dance, promises her a good horse of her very own. She laughs at his pleasantries, admires his music, and clasps her hands in delight like a pretty child when she sees the horse. She plays the part of an innocent, and the king likes to spoil her.