He turns the wheel for all of us now, she thinks, and, for the first time, the thought makes her uncomfortable. She looks up at him, wonders if he grieves. His brothers have died and he has seen them buried, and today, his breath misting in the cathedral’s cold air, he reads his sister’s funeral office. On her knees, hands clasped over the sleeping child in her belly, Cecily speaks each word with him in her heart and knows he will not falter. He looks tired. But his voice is firm as it always is, and his hand steady, as he raises it to sign God’s cross over the body and the open tomb that receives it.

As sudden as sunrise, the chancel fills with song. The waiting masons chafe their hands and take up the ropes.

They lift the heavy stone sheet into place and Joan is gone.

Cecily looks up at the cardinal and he down at her. Joan’s burial has given the world one message. Cecily has another for him. I am Beaufort, too, her eyes say. I am my mother’s daughter and Richard’s wife both; royal dukes on both sides.

Don’t forget.

She holds his gaze.

He nods.

At the funeral feast Cecily finds she cannot eat. The frost was hard this morning and the fenland wind blew bitterly through the town. After two hours in the cathedral’s pinching cold, she now finds herself stifled. Here in the priory hall, which was once her grandmother’s home, the fires burn hot and the smell of meat has her stomach roiling. So, instead of feasting, she watches. Across the hall she spies her cousin, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, newly returned from France. She suspects his presence brings cold comfort to the cardinal. Comfort because, after eighteen long years a prisoner, he is at least here. Cold because he brings so little love with him.

She watches him eat. She had imagined him a mole; knows now he is nothing so sightless nor so soft. She leans towards Richard, lays a finger on his arm, nods towards the earl and keeps her voice low. ‘He takes his knife to that chicken as if he wishes it were a Frenchman.’

Richard’s eyes follow hers, his frown disparaging. ‘A habit with him, no doubt.’