Through it all Richard has gone about his business. Quieter than is his wont. Sterner. When at home he has called often on his arms master, come back sweat-drenched and sullen from the practice field. There’s more muscle about him now than at any time she can remember, and the sinews that bind it to bone run taut. ‘It’s harder to keep,’ he joked when she admired it, ‘now I’m such an old man.’ She remembers something her father used to say. That a bright sword has no edge in a dull hand. That the body is the first weapon.

Her brother, she knows, broods in the North. She’s never seen him anything but battle fit. The Scots keep him in training. His son Warwick hasn’t left Calais since last autumn. Says he will not, though the Crown hasn’t paid his wages. He’s a thorn in Marguerite’s side there, for sure, loved by London’s money men for keeping the shipping lanes free of pirates. Not averse to a little piracy himself.

So they’ve been putting themselves in readiness, all three, with never a word spoken. Now a swan flies in through their window and calls them to arms.

Cecily lays it in Richard’s hand, the swan and the parchment it came wrapped in. Anne’s gift of warning.

‘It’s not the King’s cognizance,’ he reflects, turning it slowly in the light of his eye. ‘The swan was given to the prince. Does she recruit in the name of a five-year-old boy?’

‘She’s building an army, Richard. And its oath is given to her son. The King need only die and she will rule through the boy entirely.’

He turns it once more, its flared wings glinting, then closes his fist on it and sighs. ‘Perhaps he need not even die.’

‘What do you mean?’

He opens his fist on the table and lets the swan lie there. He makes a steeple of fingers, pressed thoughtful to his lips. ‘She need only convince him to give up his throne in his son’s favour.’ His smile is tight and sickly. ‘Catch Henry on one of his mad fool days and he’ll give you the coat off his back.’

‘But the next day he’ll wake up sensible and want it again.’ She sits opposite him, turns the swan to face her, looks hard at it, so she need not look at him. ‘She’d do better to put a pillow over his head and be done with it.’

‘Cecily …’

A shrug. ‘She’d need to, eventually. A deposed king is too dangerous to leave alive. You never know when some idiot might decide he’s worth fighting for.’

‘What? Some idiot like me?’

‘Don’t provoke.’