Lamely, the ambassador replies to them that the king is merciful. As merciless usurpers themselves, they do not understand this, but they allow the betrothal to go ahead, stipulating only that the pretender should die before the marriage ceremony. That is mercy enough, they suggest. The ambassador hints to the king that Isabella and Ferdinand, the King and Queen of Spain, would prefer it if there was not a drop of doubtful blood left in the country, not Perkin Warbeck, nor Maggie’s brother; they would prefer it if there were no heir of York at all.

“Not Lady Huntly’s baby?” I ask. “Shall we be Herods now?”

Arthur comes to walk with me in the garden, where I am huddled in my furs and striding out for warmth, my ladies trailing away behind me. “You look cold.”

“I am cold.”

“Why don’t you go indoors, Lady Mother?”

“I am sick of being indoors. I am sick of everyone watching me.”

He offers me his arm, which I take with such a glow of pleasure to see my boy, my firstborn child, with the manners of a prince.

“Why are they watching you?” he asks gently.

“They want to know how I feel about Lady Katherine Huntly,” I say frankly. “They want to know if she troubles me.”

“Does she?”

“No.”

“His Grace, my father, seems very happy to have captured Mr. Warbeck,” he begins carefully.

I cannot help but giggle at my boy Arthur practicing diplomacy. “He is,” I say.

“Though I am surprised to find Mr. Warbeck in favor, and at court. I thought that my father was taking him to London and would imprison him in the Tower.”

“I think we are all surprised at your father’s sudden mercy.”

“It’s not like Lambert Simnel,” he says. “Mr. Warbeck isn’t a falconer. What is he doing coming and going so freely? And is my father paying him a wage? He seems to have money to pay for books and to gamble. Certainly my father gives him the best clothes and horses, and his wife, Lady Huntly, lives in state.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Does he spare him for your sake?” he asks very quietly.

My face is quite expressionless. “I don’t know,” I say again.

“You do know, but you won’t say,” Arthur asserts.

I hug his arm. “My son, some things are safer left unsaid.”

He turns to face me, his innocent face puzzled. “Lady Mother, if Mr. Warbeck is indeed who he said he was, if he is being allowed the run of the court for that reason, then he has a greater right to the throne than my father. He has a greater right to the throne than me.”

“And that is exactly why we will never have this conversation,” I reply steadily.

“If he is who he says he is, then you must be glad he is alive,” he pursues, with all the doggedness of a young man in pursuit of the truth. “You must be glad to see him. It must be as if he were snatched from death, almost as if he were risen from the dead. You must be happy to see him here, even if he never sits on the throne. Even if you pray that he never sits on the throne. Even if you want the throne for me.”

I close my eyes so that he does not see the glow of my happiness. “I am,” I say shortly; and he is a wise young prince, for he does not speak of this again.

We have dancing and celebrating, a joust and players. We have a choir sing most beautifully in the royal chapel, and we give away sweetmeats and gingerbread to two hundred poor children. The broken meats from the feast feed hundreds of men and women at the kitchen door for the twelve days. Henry and I lead out the dancers on the first day of Christmas, and I look behind me, down the line and see that Lady Katherine is dancing with her husband, and they are handclasped, both flushed, the handsomest couple in the room.

Every day provides a new entertainment. We have a masque hunt led by a great giant of a man playing the Spirit of the Greenwood on a big bay horse, we have mummers and a performance of strange tall men, Egyptians, who eat live coals and are so terrifying that Mary ducks her head into my lap and Margaret cries and even Harry leans back in his little chair to feel my comforting hand on his shoulder. And all through the dancing and masquing and jockeying for position, there is Lady Katherine Huntly, the most beautiful woman at court, in her black velvet. There is my husband, quite unable to take his eyes off her, there is her husband always half a pace to the left or the right of her, always with her, but only rarely her partner, exchanging one swift unreadable glance with her before she goes forwards to the king, in obedience to his beckoning wave, and curtseys to him and waits, composed and lovely, for him to make awkward conversation.

I see that in this season of celebration he prefers to watch entertainers with her, or ride beside her, or dance with her, or listen to music, anything where he does not have to find words to say. He cannot speak to her. For what could he say? He cannot court her: she is the wife of his prisoner, a proclaimed traitor. He cannot flirt with her: there is something very sobering about her dark black gown and her luminously pale face; he cannot fall to his knees and declare his love for her, though truly I think this is what he would most naturally do, because that would be to dishonor her since she is in his keeping, to dishonor me, his faultless wife, and to dishonor his own name and position.

“Shall I take her to one side and simply tell her that she must demand to go back to Scotland?” Maggie asks me directly. “Shall I tell her that she has to free you from this constant insult?”

“No,” I say, taking a careful stitch of a plain shirt. “For I am not insulted.”

“The whole court sees the king looking hound-eyed at her.”

“Then they see a king making a fool of himself; he is not making one of me,” I say sharply.

Maggie gasps at my daring to speak against the king.

“It’s not her at fault,” I continue. We both glance across the sunny chamber to where Lady Katherine is sitting, hemming a collar for a poor man’s shirt, her dark head bowed over the task.

“She has the king dancing to her tune like she was a tuppenny fiddle player,” Maggie says bluntly.

“She does nothing to encourage him. And it keeps her husband safe. While the king is besotted with her, he will not kill her husband.”

“It’s a price you’re prepared to pay?” Maggie whispers, shocked. “To keep the boy safe?”

I cannot help but smile. “I think it’s a price that both she and I are paying. And I would do so much more than this, to keep this young man safe.”

Maggie sees me to bed as if she were still my chief lady-in-waiting instead of a beloved visitor, and blows out the candle by my bedside before leaving the room. But I am wakened by the tolling of the chapel bell, and someone hammering on my door and then bursting into the room. My first thought is that despite his passive appearance, the boy has raised a secret army and is coming against Henry, and there is an assassin with a naked blade in the palace. I jump out of bed and grab at my robe and scream: “Where is Arthur? Where is the Prince of Wales? Guards! To the prince!”

“Safe.” Maggie comes running in, her hair down in its nighttime plait, barefooted, wearing only her nightgown. “Richard has him safe. But there is a fire, you must come at once.”