This is my baby boy. I cannot bear to lose him as I lost his sister. I cannot bear that he should die in my arms as she died in my mother’s arms and they went away together. I haunt the nursery during the day and even at night I come to watch him sleep, and I am sure he is growing no stronger.

He is asleep on my lap one day in March, and I am rocking him in the chair and humming, without knowing I am doing so, a little song: a Burgundian lullaby half remembered from my childhood.

The song ends, and there is silence. I still the rocking of the chair, and everything is quiet. I put my ear to his little chest to hear the beating of his heart, and I cannot hear the beating of his heart. I put my cheek to his nose, his mouth to feel the warmth of his breath. There is no flutter of breath. He is still warm and soft in my arms, warm and soft as a little bird. But my George has gone. I have lost my son.

I hear the sound of the lullaby again, softly, as softly as the wind, and I know that Melusina is rocking him now, and my boy George has gone. I have lost my son.

They tell me that I still have my boy Edward, that I am lucky in that my handsome boy of eight years old is so strong and grows so well. They tell me to be glad of Richard, his five-year-old brother. I smile, for I am glad of both of my boys. But that makes no difference to my loss of George, my little George with his blue eyes and his tuft of blond hair.

Five months later, I am in confinement awaiting the birth of another child. I don’t expect a boy, I don’t imagine that one child can replace another. But little Catherine comes at just the right time to comfort us, and there is a York princess in the cradle again and the York nursery is busy as usual. A year later and I have another baby, my little girl Bridget.

“I think this will be our last,” I say regretfully to Edward when I come out of confinement.

I had been afraid that he would note that I was growing older. But instead he smiles at me as if we were still young lovers, and kisses my hand. “No man could have asked for more,” he says sweetly to me. “And no queen has ever labored harder. You have given me a great family, my love. And I am glad this will be our last.”

“You don’t want another boy?”

He shakes his head. “I want to take you for pleasure, and hold you in my arms for desire. I want you to know that it is your kiss that I want, not another heir to the throne. You can know that I love you, quite for yourself, when I come to your bed, and not as the York’s broodmare.”

I tilt back my head and look at him under my eyelashes. “You think to bed me for love and not for children? Isn’t that sin?”

His arm comes around my waist and his palm cups my breast. “I shall make sure that it feels richly sinful,” he promises me.

The weather is cold and unseasonal and the rivers run high. We are at Westminster for the feast of Easter, and I look from my window at the fullness and the fast flow of the river and think of my son Edward, beyond the great waters of the Severn River, far away from me. It is as if England is a country of intersecting waterways, lakes and streams and rivers. Melusina must be everywhere; this is a country made in her element.

My husband Edward, a man of the land, has a whim to go fishing and takes himself out for the day and comes home soaking wet and merry. He insists that we eat the salmon that he caught in the river for our dinner, and it is borne into the dining room at shoulder height with a fanfare: a royal catch.

That night he is feverish and I scold him for getting wet and cold, as if he were still a boy and could take such risks with his health. The next day he is worse and he gets up for a little while but then goes back to bed: he is too tired. The next day the physician says that he should be bled, and Edward swears that they may not touch him. I tell the doctors that it shall be as the king insists, but I go to his room when he is sleeping and I look at his flushed face to reassure myself that this is nothing more than a passing illness. This is not the plague or a serious fever. He is a strong man in good health. He can take a chill and throw it off within a week.

He gets no better. And now he starts to complain of gripping pains in the belly and a terrible flush of heat. Within a week the court is in fear, and I am in a state of silent terror. The doctors are useless: they don’t even know what is wrong with him; they don’t know what has caused his fever; they don’t know what will cure it. He can keep nothing down. He vomits everything he eats, and he is fighting the pain in his belly as if it were a new war. I keep a vigil in his room, my daughter Elizabeth beside me, nursing him with two wise women whom I trust. Hastings, the friend of his boyhood and his partner in every enterprise including the stupid, stupid fishing trip, keeps his vigil in the outer room. The Shore whore has taken to living on her knees at the altar in Westminster Abbey, they tell me, in an agony of fear for the man she loves.

“Let me see him,” William Hastings implores me.

I turn a cold face to him. “No. He is sick. He needs no companion for whoring or drinking or gambling. So he has no need of you. His health has been ruined by you, and all them like you. I will nurse him to health now, and, if I have my way, when he is well he will not see you again.”

“Let me see him,” he says. He does not even defend himself against my anger. “All I want is to see him. I can’t bear not to see him.”

“Wait like a dog out here,” I say cruelly. “Or go back to the Shore whore and tell her that she can service you now, for the king has finished with you both.”

“I’ll wait,” he says. “He will ask for me. He will want to see me. He knows I am here waiting to see him. He knows I am out here.”

I walk past him to the king’s bedchamber, and I close the door so he cannot even glimpse the man he loves, fighting for breath in the big four-poster bed.

Edward looks up when I come in. “Elizabeth.”

I go to him and hold his hand. “Yes, love.”

“You remember I came home to you and told you I had been afraid?”

“I remember.”

“I am afraid again.”

“You will get well,” I whisper urgently. “You will get well, my husband.”

He nods and his eyes close for a moment. “Is Hastings outside?”

“No,” I say.

He smiles. “I want to see him.”

“Not now,” I say. I stroke his head. It is burning hot. I take up a towel and soak it with lavender water and gently bathe his face. “You are not strong enough to see anyone now.”

“Elizabeth, fetch him, and fetch every one of my Privy Council who is in the palace. Send for Richard my brother.”

For a moment I think I have caught his sickness, as my belly turns over with such a pain; then I realize this is fear. “You don’t need to see them, Edward. All you need to do is rest and grow strong.”

“Fetch them,” he says.

I turn and say a sharp word to the nurse, and she runs to the door and tells the guard. At once, the message goes out all through the court that the king has summoned his advisors, and everyone knows that he must be dying. I go to the window and stand with my back to the view of the river. I don’t want to see the water; I don’t want to see the glimmer of a mermaid’s tail; I don’t want to hear Melusina singing to warn of a death. The lords file into the room, Stanley, Norfolk, Hastings, Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, my brothers, my cousins, my brothers-in-law, half a dozen others: all the great men of the kingdom, men who have been with my husband from the days of his earliest challenge, or men like Stanley, who are always perfectly aligned to the winning side. I look at them stony-faced, and they bow to me: grim-faced.