‘The city doesn’t want him. Have you not heard in the streets the cries for York?’ She takes the paper from him, reads, hands it back in disdain. ‘It bears the King’s name but has the Queen’s French stink upon it.’

Next day, when she comes again, the council is resolved to send a delegation to the King, to satisfy themselves whether it is his will they defy, or the Queen’s.

‘Then send women, not men,’ says Cecily. ‘For they will be dealing with Marguerite.’

They send her sister Anne, Buckingham’s widow, and Jacquetta, who have both called the Queen friend.

‘Perhaps you will see your husband,’ Cecily snarls at Jacquetta as she passes by her. For the golden Woodville wears the Queen’s silver swan and stands in her army. ‘Tell the Queen my son is coming,’ she calls after them. ‘Warlike Edward. She will remember him.’ Let them go, she thinks. It buys me a day.

Jacquetta and Anne return, next morning, with a letter of assurance they swear was dictated in their presence. ‘By the King or the Queen?’ Cecily demands.

‘By the King,’ says Jacquetta, chin raised, ‘who demands the return of his city, the reinstatement of his son and the punishment of the house of York, which opposes his royal will.’

The mayor looks to Cecily, hands spread and desperate.

Her smile is savage. ‘Then he is condemned out of his own mouth, an oath breaker, aligned with traitors. His signature is on the Act that made my husband, now my son, his heir. Write back and tell him he betrays himself and us.’

Cecily watches Anne and Jacquetta led from the chamber.

Her sister, who did not look at her as she gave her testimony, hesitates at the door and turns. ‘Gentlemen …’ Her eyes are on the ground, her voice quiet, but she clears her throat and speaks louder. ‘Gentlemen, it looked to me as if the Queen’s army was in disarray. They seem fewer, now, than five thousand, and disheartened. Even the Queen looks thin and hungry.’ She looks up, to Cecily, speaks clearly, and is heard. ‘I think they cannot stand against you long.’

Cecily crosses the floor to kiss her. ‘Thank you, sister.’

Anne lifts her hands from her shoulders as if they burn her.

The council takes heart. The gates remain closed.

That night, it snows, quiet as a dagger and more deadly. Then comes such a dawn that hungry men, who sleep on open ground, don’t live to see.