He shrugs. ‘There’s enough in it to make it plausible, if people want to believe it. Orléans has always been a challenge to Charles. And William argued hard for his release from England’s prison.’

‘As did my uncle. As did you.’

He smiles. ‘Perhaps you should ask Isabella what her pet poet has been up to.’

She laughs.

England freed Orléans, but Burgundy made a tool of him, a stick to beat France with; a burr beneath Charles’s saddle.

She widens her eyes further still. ‘And William de la Pole’s son on the throne?’

‘You’ll not forget he took John Beaufort’s daughter into wardship when her father died? He meant her for his boy.’

‘He wanted her money.’

‘Of course. But the Beauforts would claim the blood in their veins to be no less royal than mine.’

She is incredulous. ‘Tainted by bastardy. As I know better than anyone.’

He laughs, pushes his shoulder from the wall and comes to sit beside her. ‘I know it, too. It doesn’t matter.’ He takes her hands, shakes them lightly. ‘None of it’s true.’

‘But will Henry indict him?’

‘What do you think?’

She knows he’s right, that Henry will. The charges say, in short, that England’s disastrous policies in France, its terrible losses, are all the work of William de la Pole. Henry believes himself God’s anointed, a channel for the divine will. That will, he believes, cannot but run true in him, but its course may be diverted by treason. And there is precedent in scripture, after all; if your right hand offends you, cut it off.

She remembers William, miserable in Pontoise with Marguerite on his arm, shamefaced in Fotheringhay, admitting Anjou and Maine promised away. She remembers how hard it had become for Alice to look her in the eye. ‘The policy I pursue in France is the King’s,’ he’d said then. ‘Never, never my own.’

‘Poor William. Do you think he knew?’

‘That the King would cut him loose? If he didn’t, after Gloucester, he’s a fool far beyond our pity.’

So Cecily feels little surprise when, a month later, Oldhall writes that William de la Pole is exiled from England and must quit the country before May Day.

And only a little more when it is confirmed that his headless corpse, sword-hacked and sea-bloated, had washed up at the foot of Dover’s bare-faced cliffs the day after his ship sailed.

23

June–August 1450

Impossible, now, to imagine a quiet life in Ireland. Surely they must return home. Leave Ormond here as deputy and take de la Pole’s place at the King’s side.

‘Put my head in that noose?’ says Richard. ‘I don’t think so.’