She feels the women’s hands at her elbows, the air pulled from her lungs. She struggles to stay upright, pushes help away. There is a rage rising in her that is terrible, that could tear walls and rip throats. The faces that spin across her vision, wide-eyed and horror-struck, tell her she is monstrous, thought-blown and mad. Who are they to think so? ‘I am betrayed.’ She growls, an animal, cornered and backed. She must move. Her legs stagger, tilt her about the room. ‘Betrayed. After all and everything, he has betrayed me.’ The floor is a beast that bucks beneath her and must be fought down.

Arms reach out for her, but she cannot be held. She reels from them and hears her sister’s voice a world away, making a thin shiver, a useless nothing of her name. ‘Cecily …’

She turns on her. ‘He swore to me he would not die! He swore it!’

But, of course, he had not. He had said he would put himself to the test. He would ride at the wall. For his Queen of the World, he would do that.

And he has taken Edmund. But no, she had given him, sent him with his father. The son she did not choose.

There is searing pain as her knees meet the floor and her hands fist in her hair. She twists to deepen the agony, rips at her scalp and wishes her fingers blades, for pain opens at last a safe place within her, where she is not mad and can still her breath. The stone floor is cold on her cheek. It’s quiet now. There’s only her stuttering heartbeat and her sister’s useless sobbing. ‘Shut up! What have you to cry about?’ Not fair. Not fair. She has lost as I have. No, no, for she has not lost Richard. What is Buckingham beside Richard? And what am I without him? She feels the horror rise again, the rushing blackness, not rage now but terror. She shakes her head at it, bares her teeth and snarls. She is York. Yes. Still that. Husband gone. Son gone. Brother. What next? What to do? Upstairs, sleeping. Please God asleep. Daughters, sons. Richard’s children, the rich coin he has minted in her. Hers to keep. And somewhere, somewhere, dear God …

She throws out her arms, stiff and shaking. ‘Get me up.’ Hands grab at her, haul her into a chair. She hears a voice, almost her own. ‘Where is Edward?’

‘West, lady, mustering men.’ That’s Warwick, telling her what she knows. Idiot.

She had meant which field, which hillside? Is he safe or harried, hungry or fed?

She means, has he men? She means, is he ready? She means, will he come?

‘Call up my secretaries. Get paper. Get ink.’