He steps back at that, turns from her. ‘Because I didn’t think I needed to kill him. Because I didn’t want his blood on my hands.’ His shoulders slump. ‘Because it has been easier not to.’

‘At least you own your weakness. And now, because of it, we will very soon see him back at the King’s side.’

She’s right. In February, Henry writes to order Beaufort’s release from the Tower. The council concedes and Richard gives way. What choice, really? At least the charge of treason still hangs over him, and council denies him the King’s presence until that charge is answered. But there are few, now, ready to press for a trial, and men who clamoured for Richard’s attention yesterday give him a wide berth today. At Baynard’s the women who kept Cecily such good company are suddenly busy about their own affairs. Beating a path to Marguerite’s door, no doubt, thinks Cecily. She imagines the road to Windsor, bustling.

Walking the narrow garden beside a sullen Thames, Jacquetta tells Cecily she will go with her daughter to Leicestershire. Gilt-haired Elizabeth must begin her lying-in, and wishes to do so at home.

‘You will send me news, Cecily?’

‘As you will die without it. Does the Queen know you’re going?’

‘I’ve written.’

‘You do not visit?’

‘Travel west to go east?’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ve no wish to tire Elizabeth.’

Wily Jacquetta. ‘Yet you’ve been so close these last years. And spent much time with her.’ She cannot help but ask. ‘In all that time, was she much alone with Edmund Beaufort?’

‘I never saw them so. But then, if I had, they wouldn’t have been, would they?’ That guileless laugh, that artless smile. ‘I cannot say it didn’t happen.’

Cecily is not fooled. Jacquetta is no stranger to the secret ways of adultery; doors that close on a whisper, soft shoes in quiet corridors. On a long-ago winter morning she was, herself, discovered alone with the Duke of Bedford, in the almost-dark of a French stable, his hand on her thigh, while his wife slept, warm and oblivious in her bed.

Things unravel fast now. The King returns to Westminster with his queen. He looks thin, speaks slow and begs others to do likewise. But he has his wits about him, as much as he ever did, and has no need, he says, of a protector. Richard surrenders his post. Edmund Beaufort is welcomed back to the council. There’s barely a shuffle as he takes his place. Henry Percy is first to reach across the table and shake his hand.

‘No trial, then,’ says Cecily, when Richard tells her of it.