This morning it’s raining and Dickon is snivelling, and his father is on his knees to him saying all will be well. She’s watching him from the corner of her eye as she farewells her brother, and sees Richard press something into the boy’s hand. Then Edmund steps up and tries just to kiss her cheek, as Edward did, but she wraps him in her arms and presses her lips to his forehead, for she’s not forgotten the last time she sent him with his father, and has had no time yet to make penance for it. He pulls away and mounts, and only Richard is waiting. She rests her hands on his shoulders. He’s drenched already, and has so far to go. Her hands smooth raindrops from fox fur and pull his cloak tighter about him. This is all she can do to protect him now, and is little enough. She lifts her head, and he’s looking at her, half smiling, wholly sad. And she thinks, as she so often does, that none living knows her heart as he does.

‘My Queen of the World,’ he calls her now.

‘Come back a king then, and bed me.’

When he’s gone, and the sound of marching men has fallen to silence, she turns and leads her boys inside. George runs ahead, but Dickon stays close.

‘What did he give you?’ she asks.

He holds up a tight closed fist. ‘He said to keep it safe for him.’

She unfurls his cold wet fingers and there, dry in his palm, lies the bull’s blood ruby on its golden ring.

It’s a quiet Christmas. The King wants no festival, but he comes to table on feast days, as Chancellor George says he must, and Cecily sits beside him, reminding the court of who her husband is. Otherwise, he’s for prayer and the company of priests, which is a relief to her and everyone, though who can imagine what he prays for? Her sister keeps her company at Baynard’s. She comes, she tells Cecily, when she can bear the emptiness of her own house no longer.

‘I expect to meet my husband at every turn. Last night I ordered the maid to let down my hair. I was sure he was out drinking and would come home wanting my bed. She thought me bewitched or senseless, I’m sure.’