And that must be good enough. There’s no one else. He’s a man of business, Skelton, not a soldier, but as handy with a knife as any merchant who carries a full purse around London’s streets. Anyway, it’s not a soldier she needs now, it’s a man who can keep his wits about him and knows his way in the Low Countries. Skelton’s traded wool through the ports of Bruges and Antwerp ten years or more and has command of a ship. That’s all she needs. All she can hope for. A man who can get George and Dickon out of England.

London’s shield wall is lost. A hard-ridden messenger brought the news to her door at midnight; a Lancastrian night march, a flank attack, a swift and dark defeat. Warwick’s army lies in its gore and the King, who was his standard, is in Marguerite’s hands again.

‘Does my lord of Warwick live?’ She hopes he does; that he will cling to life long enough for her to beat him senseless.

‘Yes, my lady. He says to tell you he’s leading what men he has left west to find the lord Edward. He bids you buy time. Do anything you can to keep the gates of London closed to Marguerite.’

Tomorrow she will rail at Warwick’s failure. Tonight there is no time. The armies clashed north of St Albans, which means Marguerite is just one day’s hard march away. After Wakefield, after the cutting of Edmund’s throat, she can’t imagine even the youngest of York’s sons will be allowed to live.

So now, in the cold hour before dawn, she’s bundling them down ice-slick steps to Baynard’s river gate. George is snivelling and Dickon wide-eyed, stiff with shock. Skelton is in the boat already. For secrecy’s sake he’ll row it himself to the wharves beyond the Tower, where his ship stands waiting for the morning tide. His legs spread for balance, he holds up his arms and she hands them down, like packages, like cargo, like the nothing they’ll become if Isabella doesn’t agree to shelter them in Burgundy.

‘Do you think she will?’ Annette had asked in the frantic hour when they pulled the children from their beds.

Cecily wasn’t sure, isn’t still. It’s a demand made of friendship, no gain in it. Just one woman saying to another, keep my children alive. Such things are rare. ‘I would do it for her.’ She wonders if that’s true. ‘Beg her, if you must.’

‘Bah,’ she says. ‘You’re their mother. You should be going with them, not I. Isabella would not tell you no to your face.’