Somerset is a challenge where they had not looked for one. She knows it. He was taken prisoner in the chaos of his first battle, lately a boy, barely a man. He’s spent the months since he was ransomed laying waste to French towns, making it clear just how much he hates the country and people that stole his youth from him. The cardinal, who loved the boy’s father, his own brother, has spent that time trying to win his affection, with grants and funds and petitions to the King for new estates and honours. The more the earl disdains him for not securing his freedom earlier, the more the cardinal spends. There was even talk at the start of the year that the cardinal had wanted to take back Richard’s lieutenancy of France and give it to his nephew. Richard shrugged and said, let him have it. Cecily said, over my dead body. Gloucester, enraged, threatened to take charge in France himself rather than see a Beaufort lead England’s second kingdom. The cardinal had laughed at the idea of that, but was sobered enough to ensure that Richard was confirmed in the role.

Now, thinks Cecily, it’s our turn to call the tune. With the appointment made, both cardinal and king are keen for them to be off to France. Richard has said they will not sail until the child is born. Cecily that they will not go until the King confirms their stipend. She knows how much one year cost them. This time they go for five. She had not said she must first bury her mother, yet here they are. Across the room she watches John Beaufort’s teeth tear flesh while, beside him, his younger brother, Edmund, eyes shot, chin jutting, drinks hard and sullen.

She leans again to speak to Richard. ‘Poor Edmund Beaufort,’ she mocks, smiling thinly.

‘Why poor?’

‘He thought he had only to sit on his hands and wait for his father’s earldom to fall into his lap. Now he’s the second son again, dragging around like an afterthought in his brother’s angry train.’ She hears Richard humph beside her; watches Edmund smear a sleeve across his mouth. Suddenly disgusted and impatient with it all, she draws her napkin from her shoulder, casts it to the table and attempts to stretch her back, which aches wickedly. ‘Oh, how tedious this is.’

Richard takes her hand beneath the table. ‘Are you well?’ he asks her. ‘Do you need to leave?’

She shakes her head, which sets it throbbing, then leans past him to address her uncle.

‘One more thing, my lord cardinal, before we leave for France …’

‘Cecily, you will have the income from the Rouen exchequer and twenty thousand pounds a year from England. It’s more than Bedford or Beauchamp had. What more do you want?’

‘Not money. Only your assurance that, while we are in France, your nephews will not be.’