And so he confesses to her of the fracas in the streets when he came from the King to his lodgings. They were young men, foolish and perhaps a little drunk, and Richard had armed guards about him and the city watch had been on hand, so no harm done. But they were foolish enough and drunk enough that they still wore Beaufort badges on their sleeves.

‘You didn’t press this with the King?’

‘And give Marguerite the confrontation she wants? No. This was done to goad me, not to kill me. I’ll not be goaded.’

She sees that. Acknowledges it with a nod. A serious attempt would have been a knife in the dark, not boys waving blades in the street. She looks again at King Edward’s sons on vellum and the line of women that could make Richard a king. ‘I wish we could make this real.’

‘Would you have me end as my father did?’

She looks him full in the face, sees only sadness. She shrugs and begins to roll Bokenham’s gold-spun images away. ‘Oddly, I begin to believe this might be the only way to prevent that.’

He turns from her towards the door.

She watches him go, and sighs. ‘Double your escort. Keep from the court.’

For a year Richard heeds that advice. Head down, nose clean. He works for the King when called to, but keeps from his company, which all men know is entirely taken up by the Queen, with Edmund Beaufort’s son, Henry, at her side. At every step Marguerite challenges Richard, puts stones in his shoes and rocks in his path, speaks against his recommendations, meddles in his affairs.

He bears it quietly. He is, as he says, not goaded.

Then, with the passing of another Christmas, comes a summons from the King. It complains there has been little peace among England’s lords since St Albans. That the sons of those killed there bitterly bewail their fathers, and their cries pain his ears. He says he wants an end to discord.

‘To his wife’s nagging, he means,’ says Cecily.

The summons calls Richard, Salisbury and Warwick to a Great Council in London, to see how such an end might be achieved.

Richard reads it aloud to Cecily, rubs his chin, turns the ruby upon his finger and shrugs. ‘I’ve no choice but to go.’

‘Then go well armed. And I come with you.’