VIII

mild enquiry. It’s as if we’re discussing a bolt of cloth I might buy. Or a horse. “We could contract it now, hold the marriage ceremony – but it needn’t become binding until you turn fourteen.”
    Quite what the expression on my face is, I can’t imagine. I’m reeling. Do I like Catherine? Me? Like her ? As my wife ?
    My mother waggles her long fingers at me. “No hurry, sweetheart,” she says. “Have a think about it.” She closes her book and, hauling herself up, moves closer to the fire. One of her ladies – who has been sitting sewing in the shadows all this time – comes over to help her settle and then leaves the room on an errand.
    My mother places the toes of her slippers neatly together on the edge of a footstool and rests her head back against the chair, her eyes on me. She says, “I regret that you and Arthur didn’t know one another better. I would like to do things differently this time.” One hand is resting on the curve of her belly.
    “I will bring him up alongside you, this baby. In the same household. I hope the two of you will be close. It is important to have love in a family. Even a family such as ours. I think so, anyway.”
    I look down at my work again, turning back the pages, murmuring some sort of agreement. But I don’t know what my father’s view will be of raising loving brothers. After all, by his reckoning, this child she’s carrying could become a dangerous rival; I might have to kill him one day, just as I was told Arthur might have to kill me. Certain phrases catch my eye as I scan the text: a knight who rebels against Henry V is called “this son of darkness… this raven of treachery” .
    My mother’s woman returns with a small dish and a napkin and, bobbing a curtsey, places them within my mother’s reach. I know what is inside. For the whole week she’s been here at Eltham, my mother has suffered a craving for – of all things – eggs.
    Today’s is hard-boiled. I watch as she peels off the shell, picking at it with her fingernails, dropping the pieces into the dish at her side.
    I think of ravens’ nests – black-feathered chicks hatching.
    “Where will the baby be born?” I ask.
    “At the Tower.”
    I yelp. “Why there ?”
    “Your father chose the place. It has a symbolic strength. The ancient fortress.”
    “But…” They say that a woman’s thoughts and dreams affect the nature of the child growing in her belly. I saw my mother sleepwalk, once, at the Tower.
    “But what?” She looks at me blankly. Is she pretending to have forgotten that her brothers were murdered there – or instructing me to forget?
    The glossy white egg is peeled now: smooth and perfectly rounded, like a miniature version of her belly. She flicks off the last traces of shell.
    “Nothing,” I say. “I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable there, that’s all.”
    “On the contrary – wonderful preparations are being made. I’ve visited already to check on progress. I’m to have a bed embroidered with clouds and red and white roses. Everything will be just as I want it.”
    As she lifts the egg and bites clean into it with her sharp teeth, I suppress a shudder. The Tower, I think, is a place where a woman might give birth to – what? Something monstrous. A serpent. A son of darkness.

 
♦  ♦  ♦  XII   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    January, Greenwich: the light across the wide expanse of water is bright and cold as we emerge from the palace gateway and make our way towards the river. Barges bob and tug gently on their mooring ropes; water slaps against the landing stairs. A cutting wind whips veils out sideways and ruffles the grey surface of the Thames.
    At the head of the procession, my mother stops and turns. Courtiers hang back, while family members fan out around her to say their goodbyes, one by one.
    This elaborate occasion – a procession through the palace and now this formal farewell at the waterside – marks my mother’s departure for the Tower. There, the chambers specially prepared for her lying-in are ready to receive her. She will be alone with her attendants – the rooms are a secluded and exclusively female domain. And once my mother enters them, she will not emerge again until the child is born: it could be weeks from now.
    My grandmother, dressed for once not in black but in cloth-of-gold, grasps my mother’s elbows and presents each papery cheek to receive my mother’s kiss. Then my mother turns to Meg and me and kisses