“Better for me that he amuses himself with a wife rather than a maid,” the queen remarks quietly. “It feels less . . .” She chooses her word “. . . injurious.”

“Better for us all,” I reply. “If he has her, and gives her a son, then the bastard will be put in the Carey cradle, named Henry Carey, and we won’t have another Henry Fitzroy.”

“D’you think she will have a boy as well?” she asks me with a sad little smile. “You think Mary Boleyn can carry a Tudor boy? Birth him live? Raise him? You think that it is only I who cannot give the king a son?”

I take her hand, but I cannot look her in the eyes and see her pain. “I didn’t mean to say that, because I don’t know, Your Grace. No one can know.”

What I do know as the Lenten lilies come out along the riverbank and the blackbirds start to sing at dawn, which comes earlier every day, is that the king is certain to bed Mary Boleyn, for the affair has gone beyond little gifts—he is writing poetry. He hires a choir to sing under her window on May Day morning and the court crowns her Queen of the May. Her family—my steward Sir Thomas and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the old Duke of Norfolk—see their pretty daughter in a new light, as a step to wealth and position, and like a pair of cheerful bawds wash her and dress her and bejewel her and present her to the king as if she were a fat little pigeon ready for the pie.

THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, FRANCE, SUMMER 1520

They call it the Field of the Cloth of Gold, for the canopies and the standards and even the tents gleam with real gold thread, and the damp fields around Calais become the dazzling center of Christendom. Here the two greatest kings come together in a competition of beauty and strength, swearing peace, a peace that will last forever.

Henry is our golden king, as dashing and handsome and stylish as the King of France, extravagant as his father could never have been, generous in his politics, sincere in his quest for peace: everyone in his train is proud of him. And at his side, rejuvenated, beautiful, taking her place on the greatest stage in Christendom, is my friend the queen, and I am glowing with pride for her, and for them both, for the long struggle they have had to get to peace with France, prosperity in England, and a settled loving accord with each other.

It does not matter to me or to the queen that all of her ladies fold into a curtsey, almost a swoon, when the king—either king—comes by. It does not matter to me that Francis of France kisses every one of the queen’s ladies except old Lady Eleanor, the Duchess of Buckingham, Ursula’s fierce mother-in-law. Katherine and Queen Claude of France strike up an immediate friendship and understanding of each other. They are both married to handsome young kings; I imagine they share more difficulties than they discuss.

My sons Montague and Arthur shine in these two hotly competitive courts; Geoffrey is at my side, learning courtly manners at this, the greatest event that the world will ever see; Ursula is in attendance on the queen, though she will have to go into confinement in the autumn; and one afternoon, without warning, my son Reginald comes into my private room on the queen’s side of the castle, and kneels at my feet for my blessing.

I am breathless with surprise. “My boy! Oh! My boy, Reginald.”

I raise him up and kiss him on both cheeks. He is taller than me and he has filled out; he is a handsome young man now, strong and serious, twenty years old. He has thick brown hair and dark brown eyes. Only I can see in his face the little boy that he was. Only I remember leaving him at Sheen Priory, when his lip trembled but they told him he could not speak to ask me to stay.

“Are you allowed to be here?” I ask.

He laughs. “I am not sworn to an order,” he reminds me. “I am not a child at school. Of course I can be here.”

“But the king—”

“The king expects me to study throughout Christendom. I often travel from Padua to visit a library or a scholar. He expects that. He pays for it. He encourages it. I wrote to him to tell him I would come here. I am to meet with Thomas More. We have written so much to each other and we have promised ourselves an evening of debate.”

I have to remember that my boy is now a respected theologian, a thinker, who talks with the greatest philosophers of the age. “What will you discuss with him?” I ask. “He’s become an important man at court. He’s now the king’s own secretary, he writes the important letters and he leads many of the discussions about peace.”

He smiles. “We’re going to talk about the nature of the Church,” he says. “That’s what we’re all talking about these days. About whether a man’s conscience can teach him, or whether he is bound to rely on the teachings of the Church.”

“And what do you think?”

“I believe that Christ formed the Church to teach us, the liturgy our lesson, and the priests and the clergy translate God to us, just as we scholars translate the teaching of Christ from Greek. There is no better guide than the Church that Christ Himself gave to us. A single man’s imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.”

“And what does Thomas More think?”

“Mostly the same,” he says negligently, as if the subtle shades of theology are not worth discussing with his mother. “And we cite authorities, and counter each other’s arguments. You wouldn’t be interested, it’s quite detailed.”

“And will you be ordained?” I ask eagerly. Reginald cannot rise unless he takes holy orders, and he has been trained to lead the Church.

He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “I don’t feel that I have been called.”

“But surely, your own conscience cannot be your guide! You just said, a man must be guided by the Church.”

He laughs and nods his approval. “Lady Mother, you are a rhetorician, I should take you with me to meet Erasmus and More. You’re right. A man’s conscience cannot be his guide if it is opposed to the teaching of the Church. A man cannot set himself up against his master, the Church. But the teaching of the Church itself tells me that I must wait and study until the time is right for me to be called. Then, if I am called, I will answer. If the Church requires my obedience I must serve it, as must every man, even a king.”

“And be ordained,” I press.

“Haven’t I always done what you order?”

I nod. I don’t want to hear that impatient tone.