Well, she thinks. Here is a man who knows himself, at least. But she remembers how she had exulted under his hand last night. How her body had answered the heat of battle in him. She dismounts, lies back, closes her eyes. She feels him rise up on his elbow, knows he is seeking her face again. A word from her could crush him now. ‘If you want absolution you should have gone to your confessor.’

She counts fully three breaths before he speaks again. ‘What penance might he have set me, do you think?’

She opens her eyes and there is his face, full of trouble. And she relents. ‘None. For there is no fault.’ She will make light of this. To strike at him is to strike at herself. At York. ‘You misjudged a moment. What soldier has not?’

She feels him lie down again beside her, his long breath moves in her hair, and his heart, which was hammering, slows. His hand has come to rest on her belly. She takes it in her own and squeezes. She, who usually rails against any goal not reached, decides this will not matter. The French have been humbled and, for now, that’s enough. She has her own goal to aim for. She believes a child was begun last night and nests now beneath their joined hands. This one, she thinks, conceived in heat, will live. Tempered by fire, it will thrive.

12

April 1442

Conceived in heat and born in it, too. Cecily is slathered in sweat. She has laboured from sunrise into the dead of night and now a final, flesh-tearing heave ends in a rush of pain and noise. This child is born shouting. When it’s lifted up to her, red-faced and screaming, she falls back in hollowed-out relief. She sees she has birthed a son. And the size of him! When they lay him across her breast, she can hardly believe the weight.

‘He’s a giant, Cecily!’ she hears Jacquetta exclaim. ‘A mighty man!’

The relieved laughter of her women is almost drowned out by his cries. When they stop, sudden, on a moment, the laughter stumbles to silence and the midwife’s satisfied smile disappears into creases as she lifts the child again. Cecily sees the thrusting limbs fall still and the head sink, round-mouthed and soundless against a white sleeve, before the woman turns away and her view is broken.

‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’

‘Nothing, Cecily, I’m sure.’ But she feels a tremble in Jacquetta’s hand as it pushes sweat-slick hair from her face.

She screws her eyes shut, stinging and salt-blind, and tries to rise. But the pain is searing and her strength, when she reaches for it, is gone. They’ve taken her child and she hates them for it.

What are they doing?

There is only Jacquetta, fussing, useless, hardly worth hating.

‘My son!’