It shames her more than a little. Annette’s probably right. ‘I’m sending you. I must hold the city for Edward.’ She cannot let him fight alone, or bear again to have a sea divide her from him.

‘Always Edward.’

Now, as Skelton’s first pull on the oar draws the boat from the dock, she remembers she did not kiss her boys, or sign the cross upon their brows. She watches Annette tuck them, one beneath each arm, then look up. She holds the nurse’s accusing stare until it disappears, with the sound of the oars and the boat’s tiny bobbing light, into the river’s dark flow. Then she sits down on the cold steps, wraps empty arms about her knees and scalds her face with tears.

47

When she returns to the house, her daughters are waiting. They pull her river-damp cloak from her, sit her by a hasty fire, wrap her hands around a cup of warmed wine, and when she’s ignored it a good while for staring into the flames, remind her to drink. She does so, to please them, though the wine is grown cold and cloying. They settle on cushions at her feet, leaning against her. When the cup is empty, Margaret takes it from her, sets it down, and puts her own hand in its place. The comfort she finds in the weight of their bodies, the squeeze of Margaret’s fingers, the feel of Elizabeth’s hair under her hand, is a sin she must take to confession tomorrow. She should have made them go. She’d woken them at dead of night and asked if they would flee with their brothers. ‘I can’t be certain Marguerite will not stoop to killing women.’

Both said no. Elizabeth’s husband, the young Duke of Suffolk, is wherever Warwick is. Not dead, the messenger has said. So she’ll wait for him. Margaret simply thought a moment, cocked her head in that way she does when she’s decided something, and said, ‘I think I’ll stay with you, mother.’ She has a loyal heart, this Margaret, youngest of her daughters. She feels unworthy of it, but thankful beyond words, in this moment.

Now they wait together for the morning, for the traffic to grow on the river and the streets to begin their teeming business. But the light comes slow and the sky stays leaden, the river is slack and the streets quiet. The news has come to more doors than hers, then. London has heard of St Albans and is holding its breath.

She sends a note to the mayor, in the name of her son, the King’s heir. He is coming, she writes. And it would be his order that the city’s gates remain closed to his enemies. She commands his obedience in Edward’s name. She waits a frantic hour until word comes back.

The gates remain closed. For now.