I sink down before his rage; almost, I could kneel before him. “My lord—”

“Don’t speak to me,” he says furiously. “This is his death warrant. I can do nothing now but have him killed. Wherever he is, whatever shape he takes, whatever name he goes by, they seek him out, they believe in him, they want him as King of England.”

“He was not plotting!” I say urgently. “You say yourself it was your plot. It was not him and Teddy! He was innocent of anything but what you set men to do to him. He did nothing but agree to your plan.”

“He threatens me by breathing,” Henry says flatly. “His broken smile is my undoing. Even in prison with a smashed face, he is a handsome prince. There is nothing for him but death.”










WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1499

Lady Katherine comes to my rooms, her face whiter than the lace she has in her hand. She is making a trim for a man’s collar and the bright beads for the lace making tremble on the cushion.

She kneels on the floor before me; slowly she removes her headdress and her hair tumbles down. She bows low, almost to my feet. “Your Grace, I beg for mercy,” she says.

I look at her bowed head, the lustrous dark hair. “I have no power,” I say.

“Mercy for my husband!”

I shake my head. I lean forwards and touch her shoulder. “Truly, I have no power in this court. I had hoped that you would speak to the king for them both.”

“He promised me,” she says, her voice a little whisper of sound. “He promised me this summer. But now my husband is to be tried before a jury.”

I don’t offer her a lie that perhaps they will not convict, nor suggest that the evidence will not be damning.

“Could you not persuade the king as you did once before?” I ask her. “Could you not find a smile for him, could you not allow him—allow him whatever he wants?”

Her dark eyes flicker up to mine in one long look, as if to acknowledge the irony that I should urge her to seduce my husband to save the boy. We know what the boy means to both of us.

“I paid my side of the bargain this summer, when he said my husband would be safe,” she says. “His Grace said that if he stayed quietly in prison he could be released, later. I gave the king what he wanted in return. I have nothing more to bargain with.”

I roll back my head and close my eyes for a moment. I am beyond weariness, both of kings and the bargains they make and the women who have to find ways to please them. “You have lost your influence?”

She nods, looking me straight in the eye and admitting her shame. “I have nothing left to tempt him.” She pauses to apologize to me. “I am sorry. I did not know what else I could do this summer when they told me that my husband was in prison and taking a beating. I had nothing else to offer.”

I sigh. “I will speak with him,” I say. “But I have nothing to offer him either.”

I send my chamberlain to request an audience with the king and I am shown into his privy chamber. His mother stands behind the throne and does not move when I enter. The groom of the chamber sets a seat for me and I face Henry across the polished dark table, his mother standing like a sentry against the world, behind him.

“We know why you are here,” My Lady says briefly. “But there is nothing that can be done.”

I ignore her and look at my husband. “My lord, I don’t come to plead for the two of them. I am here because I am afraid that you are putting us in danger,” I say softly.

At once he is alert. This is a man always ready to be alert to danger.

“We are in danger every day that the boy lives,” he replies.

“Aside from that. There is a danger that you don’t know.”

“You have come to warn us?” Lady Margaret asks scornfully.

“I have.”

Henry looks at me for the first time. “Has someone spoken to you? Has someone tried to recruit you?”

“No, of course not. I am known to be completely faithful to you.” I look at his hard-faced mother. “Everyone at court but the two of you knows I am completely faithful.”

“What is it then? Speak.”

I draw a breath. “Years ago, when my mother and all my sisters and I were in sanctuary, Richard came to us to tell us that the princes were missing. Mother and I swore an oath against the man who had killed them,” I say.

“That was Richard himself,” My Lady insists quickly.

Henry’s hand stirs slightly as if to silence her.

“Richard put them to death,” she repeats, as if repetition will make it so.

I ignore her, and go on. “We swore that whoever had taken them and put them to death would himself see his own son die in childhood. And his grandson would die young also. And his line would end with a girl and she would have no heir.”