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and down my back, my arms and legs bare—even my stockings removed—and Master Manox was gazing at my lightly clad body in admiration.
    Rapidly he threw off his doublet and shirt, shoes and stockings and pantaloons, until he wore only the light tunic that covered him from his shoulders to his loins.
    I was too fascinated to move. I had never before seen a gentleman in his underclothes, though I had seen servants and village laborers in a near-naked state many times before.
    Henry Manox had a broad chest and strong legs, a thick neck with cords that stood out. Black hair covered much of his body that I could see, with wisps of grey mingled with the black. I tried to avert my eyes from his groin, but could not. I saw there what I expected to see, what Joan’s knowing talk and descriptions of lovemaking had prepared me to see. The light tunic that shielded his nakedness covered a mound, a lump, a sizable expansion of flesh. Curiosity compelled me to move nearer to him, any sense of alarm I had felt earlier dissolved.
    He reached for my hand and pulled it toward him, lowering it to the mound between his legs. I touched it lightly, then quickly pulled my hand away.
    “Nothing to fear, Catherine,” Master Manox said softly. “It will not bite you.”
    I giggled, but kept my hand withdrawn. Gently he lifted me in his arms and laid me on the mattress, then lay down beside me. His face loomed over mine, his breath fanned me. Keeping his eyes on mine, he moved his hand upward along my thigh until it approached the cleft between my legs. I shivered, quivered. I burned. And I was afraid.
    “Let me touch your sweetness, Catherine,” he said.
    I was silent—and I knew, keeping my silence, that I was saying yes.
    I felt him touch me. I nearly swooned. I turned my head away from him—whether in modesty or shame I could not have said. I could not look at him. But I could not tear myself away from his insistent, steady, intensely pleasurable touch. It was like no other pleasure I had ever known. And when it was over I felt as if I had been carried off into a realm of sensual delight I hadn’t known existed.
    I had not given him my maidenhead. Rather he had given me a bodily rapture like no other. I fell into a deep sleep until I heard Joan enter the small chamber, bringing Edward with her, and calling out cheerfully that she had brought wine and cheese and fruit for us all to share.

 
    THREE
    THERE was great rejoicing in my grandmother’s household at Horsham when Queen Jane was delivered of a son. Prince Edward was the name the king chose for him. Prince Edward, who would one day reign over us, in that future time when King Henry died, as all kings must, and his throne would pass to his successor.
    The wait for a prince had been long and tedious. King Henry’s first queen, Queen Catherine (a good and gracious lady, but a very unfortunate one in that all her children died but one), had given him only a daughter, the Lady Mary, and his second queen, my cousin Anne, had also been unable to present him with a prince—only a princess, Elizabeth, who people said was never a princess at all because most likely the king was not her father.
    But now at long last Queen Jane had had her boy, and he was said to be healthy and strong, and even my grandmother nodded her head and mumbled, yes, yes, a prince at last, and punched her bony fist against her palm.
    Our prince had finally arrived—but almost at once our queen was taken from us. Queen Jane, mild and good, had been taken deathly ill as so many women were in childbed and died soon after her boy was born. We mourned her—yet we continued to rejoice over the prince, who grew bigger and stronger and gave his father the king much pleasure and satisfaction.
    I was by then in my seventeenth year. I had been at Horsham for many months and had learned much about the ways of a large noble establishment. My one regret was that I had not grown any taller, though my figure had taken on a more