All eyes are on Richard. Except those of the golden Woodville, who is leaning against his post again, eyes dancing and lit on her.

She allows herself to imagine a crossbow bolt slamming between them, and smiles.

He thinks it a kindness, and flashes his teeth in return.

Below decks, Cecily knows, Jacquetta sits crooning over their son, Antony, born while Cecily still carried the child who now lies coldly cradled. She sighs, looks up at the sails, wind-swollen and carrying them forward. Skirting around the earnest group, she walks to the ship’s prow and fixes her eyes ahead where she fancies she can see, sunlit and far distant, the coast of France.

10

July 1441

Rouen

‘Is that bastard John Beaufort with you?’

The first question out of John Talbot’s mouth is for Richard as, not sparing her a glance, he reaches out a sword-callused hand to guide Cecily on to Rouen’s crowded quayside. When Richard steps down beside her and confirms that Somerset is not, she sees the old soldier’s face break into a brown-toothed grin, before he turns aside to hawk yellow phlegm on to the filthy cobbles.

‘Good. God curse him. Anyway, what took you so long? How many men have you got? We’re up to our arseholes in French shit over here, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

If Cecily is surprised to see Richard laugh and clap a hand to Talbot’s shoulder, she doesn’t show it. She simply redeems her hand, rubs thumb against fingertips, then wipes both against the silk of her sleeve.

‘We have six thousand, my lord,’ she tells him. ‘Get us out of this crowd and we’ll see what might be done to relieve the threat to your arsehole.’

Talbot looks at her for the first time, wiping his mouth against the sleeve of what was once a fine brocade surcoat, then back to Richard, still grinning. ‘You said she’d turned out well.’ He laughs, pulls a sweat-rimed hat from dung-dull hair and stumps a bow. ‘And my wife? She’s with you too?’

‘And Eleanor, your daughter. Yes.’ Cecily looks behind her to where the golden Woodville, ever solicitous, escorts both his own wife and Talbot’s along the jostling deck.

Jacquetta, as ever, is all smiles, waving at the crowd as if she thinks it pleased to see her. Beside her, Margaret Talbot scans the quay for only one face. Seeing it, she points, then leans down to speak quickly into the ear of the thin-faced girl before her, whose dark eyes follow nervously the line of her mother’s finger. When they come to rest on Talbot’s face there is no bolt of recognition.

The girl stares and her father squints, then looks to his wife.

‘Margaret?’ shouts Talbot.

He has seen neither wife nor daughter in five years. He has enough trouble to recognize the first. For the second there’s no hope.