She pulls on a robe and goes to his chamber, where his squires are dressing him, the window’s chilly dawn sunlight helped by candles about the room. His hair is damp at the temples and his face freshly shaved. She sends them away and finishes the job herself, tying his points, shouldering him into his doublet, smoothing the leather of his boots from ankle to knee. He goes armed, but not armoured. That’s packed with the baggage and strapped in a cart. She knows exactly which cart, which chest. She has tested its straps, signed the cross on its breastplate, reminded the squires who travel with him of the details of its care; they, nodding all the while and attentive, though they know every inch of it.

She steps back to look at him. No one can pretend he is young any more. He will be four and forty come summer’s end. There’s grey in his hair and lines about his eyes. And the bones of his cheeks are sharp and shadowed. He is but flesh and blood, and will likely fight a battle before she sees him again.

‘Marguerite has made a very grave mistake, you know,’ she tells him, taking his hand to tie the laces at his cuff. ‘She should not have made an enemy of my brother. There was no need, and we’ve gained by it. We’re cleverer than she, you and I. We do what we must.’ She lays a hand on his breast and looks into his face. ‘We’re not vicious.’ She takes up the strings at the other wrist. ‘Beaufort must die to make us safe. That’s all. My brother, too, wants him dead. Even more, he wants to kill Henry Percy. Let him. It’s to our advantage. We can control the King with Beaufort gone. But, were the King to die,’ the last knot is tied and tucked beneath velvet, ‘it would be no great cause for grief.’

35

With Richard gone, only the weary hours of waiting remain; their passage marked by the tolling of church bells and the discipline of prayer.

At noon on the fifth day, as she comes from mass, her steward brings word of a messenger spotted from the walls, riding hard and in York’s colours. By the time he comes in under the barbican she’s down the steps to meet him. He slides from the saddle and comes at a run. He must catch his breath, but his face is a blaze of confidence and his hand holds a letter closed with Richard’s seal.

‘My lord lives?’ she asks him.