She leans back and stretches a foot to the fire, strokes a hand over her swelling belly. Her fingers are stained with ink and ache from the slow work of writing. Her letters to Richard are of love and strategy; twin subjects she will not trust to a secretary. The parchment is sealed and will be on its way to him at first light. Now is the moment to push for reform, it tells him, and to turn Beaufort’s sanctuary into imprisonment. ‘My heart is with you, and my prayers line your path. I wish I were beside you. I am of more use among events than at home awaiting news of them.’

She’d wanted to go, but Richard would have none of it. Travelling in winter with a child in her belly and the country so unsettled would be madness, he said. She spat like a cat and let him go without her blessing, but sent enough after him to make amends.

She blinks sore eyes now and eases her back to standing. The maid, Katherine, silent enough to be forgotten, appears at her side, solicitous.

‘Tell my women we go to compline,’ she orders, and the girl is gone.

Cecily follows slowly, taking the long way through Ludlow’s draught-ridden corridors to lay a hand on each of the doors that guard her children’s sleep. Soon enough she hears feet pattering towards her and the swish of hurrying silks as her women catch her up. They wrap her in a cloak, put pattens on her feet and walk with her into the frosty night, drawn to the prayerful flicker of the chapel’s windows. She shuns the icy wind, turns up her collar and nests her hands within her sleeves. She will give thanks for the day’s news, for Beaufort’s incarceration, for Richard’s safety, for this step forward. She will beg another step, a certain path through the morass.

Today’s news was good. Tomorrow’s may be otherwise.

Richard walks on a sword’s edge and, since she cannot be with him, prayer must be her labour.

The reform bill Richard presents to Parliament was drafted by him and Cecily together. It says the country is ill governed, to the detriment of its people. That English interests have been betrayed in France. That the King is misled by corrupt counsel. It lists those who must be held responsible. It is a list not dissimilar to Cade’s, and Beaufort’s name tops it. It calls for them to be imprisoned, forbidden the King’s presence until they can be brought to trial.

‘It reads like an ultimatum,’ Richard had said as the ink dried.

‘It is a trial of strength,’ Cecily told him, folding its pages. ‘But you must get Parliament to say it first, so that your voice can be its echo, not its clarion.’