‘Think what will happen to our children if you lose. To our boys. You know better than any what it is to grow up the son of a dead traitor.’

He pales at that and turns away as if she’d struck him. Then he recovers himself, squares his shoulders, turns his face to her again. ‘Cecily,’ he asks, ‘do you ever think what will happen to them if I do nothing?’

So he writes a declaration to his affinity across England. To towns within his purview, to those who look for justice. It says how England suffers, how France has been lost. It names Beaufort a traitor in Normandy, a threat to Calais, a blight on the realm. It spells out how his own efforts to restore good government have been set at nothing. Beaufort’s power over the King, it says, will bring England to ruin. He must be removed. ‘Send men to me, good men, who know their duty, and I will do it. And all that I will do,’ it says, ‘will be born out of my duty and my allegiance to the King.’

He hands it to her and she reads. ‘It won’t come to a fight,’ he tells her. ‘Half the nobles of England know what Beaufort is. I will give them heart to say so. And the King will listen.’

She hands it back to him, wraps cold hands in the fur of her sleeves, nods. Well, in the end you can’t lock your husband up in his own tower. His declaration is copied. The copies are sealed. They are sent.

A week later, he’s ready to ride. Three thousand have come to him in Ludlow. Men muster across the country and will join him on the way. He expects to reach London with twenty thousand or more.

The night before he leaves, she lies awake, his living heart beneath her hand. They are gambling. Their wager is that the nobles will see Richard in his power and find courage in that sight to condemn the King’s favourite. Their stake is all they have.

She sees the whites of his eyes in dawn’s half-light and knows he, too, has not slept. She will not keep it from him. ‘There’s another child coming.’

He takes her hand in his and kisses it. ‘I will not leave him fatherless. But the smile he gives her is a sad thing, as poor in substance as his promise.

As he travels he sets up messenger posts with changes of horse, so news can be carried to her quickly.

Two weeks and he’s outside Northampton, his force all but assembled. ‘I’ve written to the King,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve told him I’m coming, and why. Everything in the open.’