Cecily looks across the table’s corner to where Richard sits, the long fingers of his right hand wrapped about his chin, the bull’s blood ruby lifeless and still and, above it, his eyes, blacker than she’s ever seen them. They sent the servants away when William started in on his tale. Now the fire’s burned almost to nothing, dusk has cast the room in shadow, and still she doesn’t know why Oldhall is here.

She stands, sets candles, kicks life into the hearth for a taper to light them. As a little warmth comes back, both men pull themselves up, stretch chilled fingers.

‘William.’ She puts a fresh glass before him, pours. ‘We are most glad to see you and, though your news is bitter, we’re grateful for it. But I wonder. It could have been put in a letter. What is it that you would not trust to paper?’

Richard’s voice is dead calm. ‘I imagine William has come to tell us why, though Rouen fell in October, we’ve heard no news of it yet from England.’

The old man nods. ‘Aye. That. Exactly so.’ He sits back, takes a breath. ‘My lord, you’re the best man we had in France since Bedford’s day and, were you there still, I think it would not have come to this—’

Richard holds up a hand. ‘Yet I was not opposed to the peace, William. Providing it’s honourably won. You know that.’

‘But we haven’t got peace, have we? We’ve got war. And we’re staring defeat in the face, thanks to that money-grabbing bastard Somerset.’

Richard’s eyes find Cecily’s and hold them. ‘Now that’s a charge, William.’

‘Aye,’ Oldhall shrugs, defensive. ‘And I don’t hold back from it.’ He counts Edmund Beaufort’s sins on swollen fingers. ‘First he blackmails the King; says he won’t honour the truce and surrender Anjou and Maine until he’s paid compensation. Which Henry gives him. Then you’d think he’d spend that on the defence of Rouen? No chance. He’s pocketed the lot. And, along with it, half of what was meant for the people who lost their livelihoods.’

She watches Richard’s frown twist in his face and knows his thoughts. He’s remembering how much of their own money was spent propping up Rouen’s rickety defences. Of the soldiers’ wages paid, quarter day after quarter day, from his own purse. He’s reckoning up plate and property they’ve mortgaged in England to pay for the King’s work in Ireland. And yet, there are the Beauforts, first John and now Edmund, gaping maws that princes seem ever ready to pour coin into. One of the richest men in England now, Edmund Beaufort, since the cardinal died and left him everything. Still hungry for more, though. Still gobbling.