Today, Cecily can see, the news is serious. She hears rapid footsteps and looks up to see her sister coming down the garden’s gravel path, head down, stiff-armed, parchment in hand. She gets up from the warm grass where she and Margaret have been wasting their time with sewing, while Annette tries to interest George and Dickon in a game. The boys are tetchy, too old for such things, but Buckingham forbids weapons training. Says he will school no fighters for York in his house. She lifts her chin, puts her needle aside and goes to meet her sister. Richard has written to his king, she hears. Salisbury and Warwick’s names, too, are upon the writ. They declare themselves loyal. They sue for peace and offer it in return. They vow allegiance and good service. They ask only for the King’s corrupt counsellors to be removed. The usual names, the usual complaint.

‘They cannot expect to be heeded,’ Anne complains.

‘I should think not. How was the message sent?’

‘By proclamation to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the Commons.’

‘And does your husband say how the King has responded?’

‘He has affirmed them traitors, courting death. I’m sorry.’

Cecily is not, though she makes a sad face and turns away. Reconciliation has been offered openly, so that the lords of England will understand Richard to be an unwilling aggressor. Its rebuttal has been heard, so they will know he has no choice.

It can only mean one thing. She lets her eyes travel the garden, where the hum of bees among roses tells her the fighting season has arrived.

They’re coming home.

Because Buckingham is with the King and Queen at Kenilworth, news of their arrival doesn’t reach Cecily until they’ve already taken the capital. Not Richard or Edmund yet, but Salisbury, Warwick and Edward.

‘They landed on the Kent coast with two thousand,’ writes Buckingham. ‘They’d gathered five thousand more by the time London’s damn mayor opened its gates to them. The Tower holds out but the city’s lost. I’m to march south,’ he tells his wife, ‘and engage their army.’

By the time more news comes, Buckingham is three days dead.

She hears her sister’s screams and comes running; finds her in the hall, floored at the feet of a messenger. He wears the King’s colours, but opens his jerkin that Cecily might see he bears in secret the blue and murrey of York.

‘I come from your son Edward,’ he whispers.

‘Into his enemy’s house,’ she answers. ‘Brave man.’

He shrugs, but looks as if courage might fail him, for men of Buckingham’s household have gathered and knives glint at their belts.

She kneels and takes her sister in her arms. ‘Anne,’ she calls to her. ‘Listen now. Let’s send these people away that we might make sense of this.’

Anne nods, distracted.