‘What force do I need, are you set to fight me? I come with no force, man. I am the Duke of York, the King’s heir come home.’

That has Bulkeley tottering, and turning his hat in his hands. ‘My lord, the King has named you traitor.’ The hat is near torn in two. ‘A watch has been set to bar you from all ports.’

Dear God. She watches Richard’s knuckles wrap white about the ship’s rail and hears him curse God’s blood beneath his breath. The rough crossing of the Irish Sea has threatened her stomach more than once, but now bile stings her throat and there is a pitch beneath her feet that has nothing to do with the tide. She locks her knees, takes a breath and holds it.

‘I don’t believe it, my lord, of course,’ Bulkeley calls up. ‘But if you try to land, I’m ordered to arrest you. To take you to Conwy Castle to await the King’s justice.’ Another look over his shoulder, as if he fears he’ll be heard onshore. ‘I’ve no wish to do it, my lord. But the King’s officers are here and if you try to land they’ll give me no choice in the matter. Or you.’ He looks up, wrings his hands. ‘Sail on to Denbighshire, my lord, where your own loyal men are,’ he urges. ‘Come ashore there.’

When the ship turns about at his order, it’s Richard who loses his stomach. He staggers across the deck like a drunkard, half stumbling down the steps to their cabin. Eager to follow him, Cecily looks behind her at the milk-white faces of her children and their nurses. Thank God for Annette. That good woman is already bundling her charges back below decks and, though her eyes are as shock-widened as anyone’s, she nods a hasty assurance over her shoulder as she goes.

When Cecily reaches him, Richard is already on his knees and heaving. She grabs a basin, holds his head till he’s done. When he looks up at her, his brow sweat-beaded and his lips white, she hardly knows him. His fingers are fisted in her skirts as if, without her, he might fall.

‘A traitor, Cecily. He has named me traitor. Sweet Christ.’

She joins him on the floor, pulling his head to her shoulder, while her own mind grasps for purchase on that word; the word that made his father meat for the headsman and is come now to threaten the neck beneath her hand. Beyond the cabin’s thin wall baby George sets up a cry. A sharp tug draws her heart across the many miles to Ludlow, where Edward is, and Edmund, a traitor’s sons now, and far beyond the reach of her arm.

‘Dear God, Richard,’ she says. ‘We need an army.’

She feels the intake of breath, the tensing of muscle as he steadies himself.

‘Yes.’