But she knows it will be far from well. Don’t put your sons in harm’s way, Annette has said. Too late. That’s done. If Richard dies a traitor they’ll be taken from her, their wardships sold to men the King owes favours to, or wants to reward. Edmund Beaufort and others like him. Her daughters sold down in marriage to men of ambition, who’ll pay good money for the richness of their blood. And the child now in her womb? Dear God, better it were lost now.

At the end of a hunt, when the stag is dead, all men, according to their station, are gifted a share of the kill, till there’s nothing left but bone and scrag, and then the dogs fight over that. So it will be for all that she and Richard have built together and been. Their children. Their affinity. Their titles and estates. All will be meted out, gobbled up and slathered over. Even Fotheringhay, and the dead that lie there. And what of her? Her dower lands are rich enough. They’ll want those, too. Will they name her traitor to get them? Women, too, can be condemned. She remembers Gloucester’s Eleanor, her bruised feet stepping into darkness, and Joan, who she watched burn.

All day she sits alone, growing colder as the fire dies. When it is nothing but ash, and the room shadowed by dusk, she pulls herself to her feet, rubs blood back into icy fingers, kicks the fire. There’s no life in it, but no matter. She is decided. Tomorrow she will ride to London, to the King. Not to fight or threaten. To sue for mercy. To beg for her husband’s life. And if it is too late for that, for her children’s, and her own.

Stiff legs stilt her to the door. She lays her head against the wood. They will demand that you denounce him, she counsels herself. At the very least they will want that. She has never betrayed him. His cause has been hers, always. But the thought of her children, the rich coin of them in other men’s purses, is unbearable. She will save him if she can, denounce him if she must. Sure, he has been a fool. And now she must be about it. Her hand finds the cold metal of the door’s latch and lifts it. She steps out into the world of the castle where, subdued and silent, her people wait to know her will.