There’s no point arguing it now, while Warwick is swaggering and her brother laughing at his jokes. But she reminds Richard, later, when they’re alone, that Marguerite is a woman who can do very great harm, even from a distance.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘You’re right. I’ll tend to it.’

Easier said than done. Though the council make him Protector in practice, they’re leery of putting their names to any paper that confirms it. They fear the King may come to his senses and want to know why his favourite is in prison and his enemy at the head of his Government. They certainly don’t want to make any move that would appear to confine him. So, when the Queen says she would rather remain where she is, and the King with her, they hold up their hands, shrug their shoulders, shuffle and nod.

Richard is obliged to exercise power without authority. It’s a tiresome way to live, for no man will make a decision unless backed by his peers, and no writ passes without a score of signatures. The Queen stays put and Somerset, though imprisoned, is not brought to trial, no matter that, every day, Cecily asks Richard why his head has not yet met with the block. And every man looking over his shoulder and asking, what news of the King today? How does the King?

Just when Cecily thinks her nerves will be worn away by it, Marguerite herself steps in to help. She has, indeed, not been idle in Windsor. Between nursing her son and tending her husband she’s found time to formulate a case. In the days after Christmas she sends John Kemp to present it to the council. Kemp is Chancellor and cardinal too. A politician with God on his side, who loves his king, owes his high office to Beaufort’s influence and, at eighty, is too stubborn or too old to trim the sails of his allegiance. The Queen, he tells them in a voice that’s used to being listened to, claims her right to rule as regent: for her husband, until he is recovered, or for her son, till he comes of age.

‘Tell them,’ says Cecily, when Richard reports to her the council’s shock and fluster, ‘that if they want to be ruled by a Frenchwoman with Beaufort at her side, then by all means …’

By no means, obviously. A Parliament is called and Richard put at its head with authority, and the council’s backing, to refute the Queen’s claim. A month later, when Kemp is found dead in his bed and the way is clear, he is offered the role of Protector.

‘Tell them you can’t accept,’ says Cecily.