Beside her, she realizes, Richard is deep in conversation with her cardinal uncle, who has escaped the court’s clutches to bring the King’s greetings to them both. They’re speaking of France; of who will take up the lieutenancy made vacant by Richard Beauchamp who, last spring, escaped the demands of the post by dying in it.

‘There’s only one man in England who can be sent without enraging Gloucester or disappointing me,’ says the cardinal.

‘I don’t want it,’ Richard is saying. ‘I give good service. I hold the Welsh Marches for the King and I bring rich revenues to the Crown. Let that be enough. Besides, since when have you scrupled to enrage Gloucester?’

‘I can get nothing done for the noise of his barking. I need a man in France who can work for peace.’

Cecily listens while watching the room. In her head she’s listing those who have come to witness her triumph. She’s warmed by the sight of her mother’s eldest son, Salisbury, taller by a head than most men, broad like her father, come striding into hall. His hand rests on the shoulder of his eldest boy. At eleven the boy is growing into his sire’s handsome image. Where’s my brother’s wife? she wonders. At home, probably, fat with yet another child. She’s surprised to find she doesn’t mind that so much either. Her brother has noticed her watching him, so she acknowledges him with a nod. He stops as if arrow-struck, then sketches an elaborate, laughing bow before coming up to join them at the board. A space is made for him and he sits beside her, his son taking the esquire’s place behind his chair. She’s so pleased he’s here. Like most of her siblings he was well out in the world before she was born, so she’s learned to love him as a man, not a boy. And she’s grateful, too, for his love of Richard. While most of her brothers spurned his traitor’s blood, he’s been a friend to him, and they’ve worked well together lately, in France.

‘What’s your husband speaking of that makes his face so serious, today of all days?’ he asks her, reaching for a cup.

‘Of France. What else?’ She turns from him to the cardinal. ‘If no one wants peace, uncle, your work will be fruitless, whoever you send.’ She smiles. Politics. How she’s missed it.

‘Your uncle the cardinal believes he has a way to make peace palatable.’ Richard acknowledges his brother-in-law, then takes her hand, drawing her into the conversation.

‘I say we free the Duke of Orléans.’ The cardinal catches her gaze and winks.

Salisbury laughs and calls for wine.

Cecily too can’t help but scoff. ‘It seems I’ve been away too long and the wise have turned witless. That will never be.’