Two days later. ‘I’ve received an embassy from Henry. They ask my motives for insurrection. There is no insurrection, I tell them. I serve the King. I come for justice against a traitor, no more.’

He reaches London at month’s end. Its gates are closed against him, by order of the King. ‘Henry’s been in the Midlands,’ he writes, ‘but is coming south now and gathering men. Your brother Salisbury is with him. And Warwick. Talbot, too. Everyone, pretty much. Edmund Beaufort, of course, and the Queen. I’ll circle around to Dartford, camp there and let him come to me.’

Then his letters, which have come almost daily, stop.

Through four age-long days, she prays. The morning the news comes, she’s in her chamber, her confessor is with her and her women. She has taken mass and is still on her knees. The silence is broken by the racket of heavy boots on the stairs, of harness jangling. She’s up and turning to the door as it opens.

Her chamberlain barely makes it through before the messenger, pale-faced and mud-spattered, pushes past him to come to his knees at her feet.

‘Lady, the duke your husband is taken.’

29

‘I did not expect this betrayal, sister. Believe me.’ Her brother Salisbury’s words are hastily written, barely readable as they race across the page. They tell her that Beaufort walks free as air and Richard is the King’s prisoner. ‘They’re taking him to London. I go too, and will do what I can to keep him alive. Do nothing, sister. Wait.’

The King had come to Dartford with equal force and, when Richard requested parley, sent a royal delegation with Salisbury at its head, with his son Warwick and a bevy of lords and bishops. Men, carefully chosen, Cecily realizes. Men Richard would trust.

‘Is it a fight you’ve come for, brother?’ Salisbury asked him.

Richard told him, ‘No, it is as I have written, I want only peace and justice.’

‘Aye, you look peaceable enough. With twenty thousand bristling at your back.’

‘My enemy is strong. And my good faith spent.’

Salisbury asked him to name his demands.

There was only one. That Beaufort be arrested on charges Richard has drawn up. That he be removed from the King’s side and Richard restored to it.

‘Only that?’ Salisbury asked.

‘Only that. I to be the King’s chief Councillor. Beaufort to be tried before Lords and Commons. I will even step aside from the trial. I will leave it to others. And on the King’s promise of this, for I know him to be a man faithful to God, I will disperse my force and come on my knees before him.’

‘And if not, you will fight?’

‘I will fight Beaufort.’

‘You can’t fight Beaufort without fighting the King.’