There he is, halfway down the hall and deep in his cups, a typical churchman. He looks up, baffled.

‘Come here, man.’ Richard has them up on their feet, Bishop Boulers and soldier Talbot, out from the hall and across the corridor.

Cecily picks up her skirts and follows them to an anteroom, ill lit and bare, piled with soiled linen and plate from the feasting. Richard closes the door behind him, sets his back to it.

‘I am in earnest now,’ he says, holding John’s blinking eyes with his own. ‘Give me your cross, Father,’ his hand out, peremptory.

The bishop fumbles, gives it over.

‘I have one enemy, John. Edmund Beaufort. None other. And by his making, not mine.’ He’s on his knees now, the cross in his hands before him. ‘I am the King’s true man. Am now. Ever have been. Will be till death. Loyal. Tell him, John. Tell him what I have pledged before you tonight.’

An hour later, the last of the company abed, Cecily goes to her room and finds her maids sent away and Richard, waiting.

‘Well,’ she says, the closed door to her back. ‘That was a show. Oaths sworn on the cross. Churchmen called as witness. You on your knees calling on God. Everything Henry’s fervent spirit will like.’

Richard smiles. ‘And Talbot will relay it faithfully. He wasn’t that drunk. Are you coming to bed?’

She comes, and the loving is like food after famine.

Richard writes to his king. Tells him of the oath he swore to Talbot. Offers to come to London to swear it before his face. He hears nothing. A council is called at Westminster. He’s not invited. Beaufort, he hears, has had Oldhall dragged from sanctuary and imprisoned. Only the Dean’s pleas to the King have saved him, and he’s back in St Martin’s with nothing more than bruises. It is not to be borne.

In the dark days of February, when the Teme is trammelled by ice and its banks hang heavy under hoar frost, Richard says he’s done with it all, and sits down with his secretary.

‘Can I say nothing that will stop you?’ Cecily asks.

They have argued themselves to exhaustion, up and down the ladder of reasons for and against this madness. They are tired of themselves and of each other. Even their dogs slink away when they meet.

Richard’s face is a sheet of stone. ‘I will say in the open what all say in secret. That England will have no peace until Beaufort is removed from the King’s side.’

‘Words won’t do it. Can you fight Edmund Beaufort without fighting the King?’

‘The time is not right to fight the King.’

‘Then the time is not right for this.’

‘Then what’s the alternative? To be harassed and harried till our enemy is strong enough to pull us down?’