She raises her chin, and then, having measured the depth of Bedford’s slow bow, the slide of Gloucester’s eyes, lets Richard raise her hand, turn her about, lead her away. The crowd parts for them and, as if their leaving is a signal, begins to disperse.

Englishmen murmur and pat each other’s shoulders as they go, well done, well done.

Frenchmen, penned in to witness this defeat, slip between guards who part their pikes to let them pass and chide, ‘Go home now, and take a lesson from this.’

Cecily watches them go. What lesson should she herself take? she wonders. Only that, if a woman takes up arms, she must be very sure of winning.

2

16 December 1431

Paris

With Joan dead, England’s king can come to his French crowning. It’s been a long wait. A hundred years of battling and scrapping, winning by inches, then losing again. The fifth Henry, this one’s father, came close after Agincourt, but coughed up his guts on another battlefield before he could drag his bony arse to the throne. He handed the task to his brothers, Bedford and Gloucester. A deathbed promise wrested from them both: hold England, win France. Make my son king of both.

Now the day is come and the incense-drenched air above Notre Dame’s high altar is riven by the Sanctus bell, calling God to come lay hands on his anointed. As the cathedral’s vast spaces fall silent on the dying chime, Cecily dares raise her eyes to where, beyond a sea of bowed heads, her Uncle Beaufort, the towering scarlet cardinal, lowers the long-contested crown of France on to the child Henry’s head.

Henry himself is a shimmer of white, his ten-year-old arms outstretched, his bare breast sheened with chrism, his face tear-swept and rapt. His mouth falls open in a small round ‘oh’ as the weight of a kingdom falls on him. She shivers at it. Dear God in Heaven, is this how kings are made? Henry raises his head in a shaft of sunlight, blinks in its dazzle. Her eyes, following his, are caught in the glare of a second crown, that of England. Henry’s by right since he was six months old, now held aloft in Gloucester’s arms.

The cardinal’s voice rings out. ‘Henry, the sixth of that name, King of England and of France.’

The glad words draw a tidal sigh of amens. When the cardinal turns to acknowledge them, Cecily knows herself seen, the only upturned face, watching holy mysteries as if she has a right to know God’s business. She expects his look to be a chastisement. He is her mother’s brother, after all, and no less sharp. But his eyes crease at the corners and, almost, he smiles, as if to say, there you are Cecily, bold as ever.