She feels the pulse drumming in her throat and temples, her breath sawing through blown lungs. And there is Annette’s face, hard, resolute, clear. She looks as I do when I’m not mad, she thinks. ‘Annette, my husband has put his head into a noose.’

‘Then let us not put your sons’ there.’ Good advice.

She lets the madness drain from her and when Annette leads her to a chair and lets go her wrists, she sits.

‘Shall we send these men away, so we can think?’

Cecily nods and listens to them go, footsteps disappearing, fair scampering to be gone. And her women too, white-faced, and with good reason. Most of them have husbands in Richard’s company.

‘Don’t go far, Marshal Reynold,’ she hears Annette say. ‘I am sure my lady will have need of you.’

There’s relief in his mumbled, ‘Aye.’ She should laugh at it. A soldier taking orders from a nurse.

Annette puts a cup of wine in her hands and she drinks it. Unwatered, sharp and cold from the jug, it sears her mouth and clears her head.

She rubs the back of her hand across her lips. ‘No army would follow me. And Edward is not ten years old.’

‘And, if your husband dies, he is the King’s heir.’

‘And the Queen’s enemy. And Beaufort’s.’

‘Which is a dangerous thing. Lady, I don’t know what you should do. But I think you should not put your sons in Beaufort’s way till they are men.’

Cecily nods, closes her eyes against a spinning world, takes a rasping breath, then opens them again. She must look at it, spin as it might. A world without Richard. The days beyond his death. She sees her hands lying loose in her lap, her fingers bloodless and cold. She clasps them and, when she feels the unforgiving metal of her rings grind against bone, tightens her grip till it grows painful. It is something to focus upon while her heart slows and her breath evens. ‘Forgive me, Annette. I was mad for a moment. I am well enough now.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Nothing. I must think. Go to the children. Keep them together.’

‘Shall I send your women to you?’

She shakes her head. ‘What use are they? But if messengers arrive they’re to be sent to me straight. No one else, mind. Stay with the children. Tell them all will be well.’