Richard, who waited patiently for her coming, is elated as they leave. He walks before her, laughing, turning to look at her with dancing eyes as he casts silver pennies into the sunlight, picked up in handfuls from a deep bowl carried in the arms of his esquire. The poor of the town, accustomed to their lord’s generous alms-giving, have come in crowds to scrabble for his money among the grass, while young girls in festival dresses throw white rose petals at his lady’s feet. That’s Richard’s work, she knows, for they have taken the white rose as the emblem of their house, for its purity and glory and because it is the flower of the Virgin, who brought God into the world. She shakes her head at him, indulgent, pleased, for it’s late in the season and he must have sent far and paid much to find so many.

More roses bedeck Fotheringhay’s great hall, where the feast is laid ready for their arrival, and where maids and serving men scatter to attend them as they enter amid music and song. Richard takes her hand and guides her up the hall to the board, where she takes her seat at his side after so long an absence. The child is brought. Richard takes his daughter in his arms, holds her up to the room’s adoration, kisses her soundly and hands her back to her nurses, who scurry away with her to the nursery.

Cecily smooths the sleeves of her gown, white damask, silver-shot, and accepts greedily the wine Richard offers her in toast. She has trained herself to eat frugally in these weeks since the birth and already her body is recovering its slenderness. Her mirror, this morning, told her she was beautiful; a rich purse, of proven worth. Today she will drink deep and eat heartily. She looks along the tables to where the good families of Northamptonshire feast on her bounty. Beside her at board, two of her sisters, Katherine and Anne, keep company with their noble husbands, Norfolk and Buckingham, and her brother Edward, the only child her mother bore after her, is solicitous to his wife, who gave him a fine first son at last year’s turning. Today she doesn’t mind even that, she tells herself. She has only good will towards everyone, even Jacquetta, who has added a second daughter to her tally and confided to Cecily that she expects to be brought to bed again next spring. She smiles as she watches her make love eyes at the golden Woodville who, it seems, dotes on her still and feeds her sugared almonds from his hands.