News of our Christmas feast goes all around Christendom. The new court in England is said to be the most beautiful, elegant, mannered, and gracious court in Europe. Edward is determined that the English court of York shall become as famous as Burgundy for fashion and beauty and culture. He loves good music, and we have a choir singing or musicians playing at every meal; my ladies and I learn the court dances, and compose our own. My brother Anthony is a great guide and advisor in all of this. He has traveled in Italy and speaks of the new learning and the new arts, of the beauty of the ancient cities of Greece and of Rome and how their arts and their studies can be made new. He speaks to Edward of bringing in painters and poets and musicians from Italy, of using the wealth of the crown to found schools and universities. He speaks of the new learning, of new science, of arithmetic and astronomy and everything new and wonderful. He speaks of arithmetic that starts with the number zero, and tries to explain how this transforms everything. He speaks of a science that can calculate distances that cannot be measured: he says it should be possible to know the distance to the moon. Elizabeth, his wife, watches him quietly, and says that he is a magus, a wise man. We are a court of beauty, grace, and learning, and Edward and I command the best of everything.

I am amazed at the cost of running a court, of the price of all this beauty, even the charges for food, of the continual demands from every courtier for a hearing, for a place, for a slice of land or a favor, for a post where he can levy taxes or for help in claiming an inheritance.

“This is what it is to be a king,” Edward says to me as he signs the last of the day’s petitions. “As King of England I own everything. Every duke and earl and baron holds his lands at my favor; every knight and squire below him has a stream from the river. Every petty farmer and tenant and copyholder and peasant below him depends on my favor. I have to give out wealth and power in order to keep the rivers flowing. And if it goes wrong, at the least sign of it going wrong, there will be someone saying that they wished Henry was back on the throne, that it was better in the old days. Or that they think his son Edward, or George, might do a more generous job. Or, surely to God, there is another claimant to the throne somewhere-Margaret Beaufort’s son Henry, let’s have the Lancaster boy for a change-who might speed the flow. To keep my power, I have to give it away in carefully spaced and chosen pitchers. I have to please everyone. But none too much.”

“They are money-grubbing peasants,” I say irritably. “And their loyalty goes with their interest. They think of nothing but their own desires. They are worse than serfs.”

He smiles at me. “They are indeed. Every one of them. And each of them wants their little estate and their little house just as I want my throne and as much as you wanted the manor of Sheen, and places for all your kinsmen. We are all anxious for wealth and land, and I own it all, and have to give it out carefully.”

SPRING 1470

As the weather turns warmer and it starts to grow brighter in the mornings and the birds start to sing in the gardens of Westminster Palace, Edward’s informers bring him reports from Lincolnshire of another uprising in favor of Henry, the king, as though he were not forgotten by everyone else in the world, living quietly in the Tower of London, more an anchorite than a prisoner.

“I shall have to go,” Edward says to me, letter in his hand. “If this leader, whoever he is, is a forerunner for Margaret of Anjou, then I have to defeat him before she lands her army in his support. It looks like she plans to use him to test the support of her cause, to have him take the risk of raising troops, and when she sees he has raised an English army for her, she will land her French one and then I will have to face them both.”

“Will you be safe?” I ask. “Against this person who has not even the courage to have a name of his own?”

“As always,” he says steadily. “But I won’t let the army go out without me again. I have to be there. I have to lead.”

“And where is your loyal friend Warwick?” I ask acidly. “And your trusted brother George? Are they recruiting for you? Are they hurrying to be at your side?”

He smiles at my tone. “Ah, you are mistaken, little Queen of Mistrust. I have a letter here from Warwick offering to raise men to march with me, and George says he will come too.”

“Then you make sure that you watch them in battle,” I say, completely unconvinced. “They will not be the first men to bring soldiers to the battlefield and change sides at the last moment. When the enemy is before you, cast an eye behind you to see what your true and loyal friends are doing at the rear.”

“They have promised their loyalty,” he soothes me. “Truly, my dearest. Trust me. I can win battles.”

“I know you can, I know you do,” I say. “But it is so hard to see you march out. When will it end? When will they stop raising an army for a cause which is over?”

“Soon,” he says. “They will see we are united and we are strong. Warwick will bring in the north to our side, and George will prove to be a true brother. Richard is with me as always. I will come home as soon as this man is defeated. I will come home early and I will dance with you on May Day morning, and you will smile.”

“Edward, you know, just this once, this one time, I think I cannot bear to see you go. Cannot Richard command the army? With Hastings? Can you not stay with me? This time, just this time.”

He takes my hands and presses them against his lips. He is not affected by my anxiety but amused by it. He is smiling. “Oh why? Why this time? Why does this time matter so much? Do you have something to tell me?”

I cannot resist him. I am smiling in return. “I do have something to tell you. But I have been saving it.”

“I know. I know. Did you think I didn’t know? So tell me, what is this secret that I am supposed not to have any idea about?”

“It should bring you home safely to me,” I say. “It should bring you home quickly to me, and not send you out in your pomp.”

He waits, smiling. He has been waiting for me to tell him as I have been reveling in the secret. “Tell me,” he says. “This has been a long time coming.”

“I am with child again,” I say. “And this time I know it is a boy.”

He scoops me to him and holds me gently. “I knew it,” he says. “I knew that you were with child. I knew it in my bones. And how can you know it is a boy, my little witch, my enchantress?”

I smile up at him, secure in women’s mysteries. “Ah, you don’t need to know how I know,” I say. “But you can know that I am certain. You can be sure of it. Know this. We will have a boy.”

“My son, Prince Edward,” he says.

I laugh, thinking of the silver spoon that I drew out of the silvery river on midwinter’s eve. “How do you know that his name will be Edward?”

“Of course it will. I have been determined on it for years.”

“Your son, Prince Edward,” I repeat. “So make sure you are home safely, in time for his birth.”

“Do you know when?”

“In the autumn.”

“I will come home safely to bring you peaches and salt cod. What was it you wanted so much when you were big with Cecily?”

“Samphire,” I laugh. “Fancy you remembering! I could not have enough of it. Make sure you come home to bring me samphire and anything else I crave. This is a boy, this is a prince; he must have whatever he desires. He will be born with a silver spoon.”

“I shall come home to you. And you are not to worry. I don’t want him born with a frown.”

“Then you beware of Warwick and your brother. I don’t trust them.”

“Promise to rest and be happy and make him strong in your belly?”