Precedence and protocol dictate the churching of a queen. Marguerite is a stickler for both. Richard, too, in his way. Everything by the book, he says. The Queen will have her day and he will do his duty. The book says the Queen must be led from her seclusion to Westminster’s chapel by the two highest-ranking men in England. She will lean on their arms. They will guide her steps. Well, it won’t be the King, of course, so it must be Richard.

‘And?’ says Cecily.

They’ve been a week at Baynard’s Castle, their town house on the Thames. The perfect place for making plans; the ears of the court can’t hear them, and their allies can visit discreetly by the river gate.

‘Well,’ says brother Salisbury from his place by the fire. ‘Edmund Beaufort will claim it, I suppose.’

‘Oh, yes,’ says Cecily. ‘Let him step behind you, Richard. Perfect.’

Richard only shakes his head at her, amused. ‘Then you will have to play your part alongside his ugly wife.’

But she’s thought of that, too. ‘Jacquetta is the widow of the King’s uncle. I believe that takes precedence over Beaufort’s wife.’ She thinks again. ‘Even over yours, in fact.’

‘You’ll come second to Jacquetta just to snub Beaufort’s wife?’

‘Just this once.’

They set it down.

Council approves it.

Three days later, she’s on her knees beside the bed where Marguerite birthed her son and sits now in solemn state, straight-backed, sharp-faced. The Queen wears the colours of a fruitful harvest, russet cloth-of-gold layered with sable furs, sleek as a vixen’s back. Marguerite has not spoken. She is not required to speak. But Cecily can see the tension in her, the thrum of a pulse at her neck, rosary beads biting the bones of her hands.

Beyond the wide expanse of bed kneels Jacquetta, in plump pigeon-grey, crop-full with pleasure. About the room, in places of lesser honour, a score or more noble ladies, wives of dukes and earls, bend the knee. Three of Cecily’s sisters are among them, her brothers’ wives, her own daughter Anne, for Henry Holland’s sake. Cecily knows them all, their husbands, their children, their grievances and ambitions. She knows how close they are to the Queen, what binds them to the King, how deeply Beaufort has offended them, or if they’re thick as thieves. More than ever, it’s her business to know these things, now the wheel is turning so fast. Their names are on a list that is written only in her mind and in Richard’s. Beside each name a note; how they might act, how they’re to be dealt with, what must be done to keep them compliant. She has it by heart. She expects to be busy. But that’s not for today. For now she folds her hands in her sleeves, and waits.