‘Richard,’ says Salisbury, ‘get yourself home. Cade is calling for the lords of the old royal blood to be given the reins of England under the King. He’s named you chief among them. And he’s taken to calling himself Mortimer. And don’t imagine anyone’s forgotten for a moment that it was Mortimer blood your father died for. Anyway, no one knows who the bugger is, but those with little cause to love you whisper that, since he comes in your name, you must have sent him. I pray you did not.’

And a week later, another letter from Oldhall. ‘Get yourself home, Richard, for Cade is dead and Caen is fallen. Edmund Beaufort’s back in England. He’s asking how Jack Cade became John Mortimer and wondering where you are in all this. He’s swearing he’ll set the world to rights. And Henry has been fool enough to believe him and name him Constable of England.’

Impossible, now, to stay.

‘You were right,’ says Richard. ‘We should have gone when de la Pole was killed.’

She says nothing. What would be the point? Besides, there’s too much to do.

It’s well into August before they’re ready. Richard refused to go until all was in order. Ormond is named deputy and has been at his shoulder day and night; meetings and conferences, orders and plans; harassed scribes massaging sore fingers, and fast-horsed messengers sending up dust every hour of the day. She’s seen the letter Richard has written to the King saying that he is coming, explaining the good order in which he leaves Ireland, promising to wait on him on his return. It should be in Henry’s hands by now. She wonders if it is in Edmund Beaufort’s.

But today is their last day. Tomorrow they’ll ride out of Trim, and she cannot imagine they will ever return. But the sun is warm, the sky blessedly empty of rain, so when she looks into Richard’s tired morning face and sees the sadness in it, she tells him they will have one last day of pleasure. They will fly their hawks on the banks of the Boyne and ride to Tara; to the hill’s top, this time, from where, they’ve been told, all the counties of Ireland will be given to their sight.

‘Ormond must come too, then,’ says Richard, ‘for there’s much still to speak of. Besides,’ he tells her, when her smile falls, ‘he’s promised, many times, to tell us the hill’s history, and has not yet.’

It’s a good morning’s hawking. Rabbits mostly, though Richard has brought down a hare. Its muscled hind legs are crossed in a hitch at the falconer’s shoulder and its head falls almost to his knees. A thing built for an arrow’s speed, now bouncing, quiverless and dull, against a servant’s greasy jerkin.