‘Yes, I’m sure you would.’ He dips his head. ‘Men say he sleeps most nights alone. And that he prays much.’

She can’t help but smile. ‘Then I’ll wager she prays too.’

Whether he was believed or not, Cecily knows Richard has sworn his oath of fealty before the court and that, when he did so, the King kissed him on both cheeks. With tears in his eyes, so Richard had written her. After, when Richard asked for speech, he was invited to walk with Henry to his chambers. He told the King that, now all was well between them, he would attend the next Parliament, as was his right, and asked for authority there.

‘We should not ignore the Commons’ calls for reform,’ he told his king. ‘They think England ill governed, taxes too high, bread too dear. Well, let me hear and judge what is reasonable.’

‘You think they have cause?’

‘I don’t know. I need to hear.’

‘They mew always about the loss of France. Don’t they understand the benefits of peace?’

‘Perhaps they’ve not felt them yet.’

Henry, flanked by the inevitable Beaufort and the ever-present Queen, drew to a halt at his words. ‘I want all my people to feel them, in their hearts and in their purses.’

Cecily had laughed when she read that.

‘Then let me hear what they have to say,’ Richard said. ‘And let’s have a Speaker they can respect, one who understands France and fought for it. William Oldhall is a good man.’

Henry looked hard at him. ‘He is your man.’

‘He is his own. That’s why he’s good.’

Beaufort bristled, but the King laughed, clapped Richard on the shoulder, and granted it full willing.

‘Well done,’ Cecily had whispered on reading of it, folding the page.

Richard’s next letters, though, had not come from London. They told her he rode with her nephew Norfolk into East Anglia to see how tempers were in what was once Suffolk’s heartland. He found them ill, as elsewhere. Cade may be dead, but in every county the unrest that birthed his rebellion still simmers beneath the surface. He went briefly to Fotheringhay, to visit his sons under stone. She has no wish to speak of that. She’d imagined he’d then return to London, stay by the King until Parliament opened. But here he is, in her bed.

She asks him again. ‘Why?’

He shrugs. ‘My journey east was at Henry’s bidding but, most surely, at Beaufort’s prompting. To get me out of the way. Out of his way.’

‘And you’ve played into his hands very readily.’

He grimaces, slides down the bed to lie flat.

Impossible, now, to hide the irritation in her voice. ‘Why would you do that? And then why come here?’