But William isn’t smiling now. And the young girl who walks beside him, and whose pale hand lies rigid on his sleeve, looks no happier than he. Arguably, Marguerite of Anjou’s joy should be unalloyed, for she, against all expectation, is to be England’s queen.

‘Is that the best he could do, do you think?’ Cecily had asked Richard when William wrote that he was returning with the King’s bride. ‘She’s … what? The French queen’s niece?’

‘On her father’s side.’

‘Do you think any man in England has ever heard of her?’

‘If they have, they’ve probably forgotten. But honestly, Cecily. I don’t care if Henry marries the queen’s niece or the queen’s spaniel, if it can bring us to an honourable peace.’

‘Well,’ she had conceded with a grin, ‘a spaniel. It’s not quite as bad as that.’

Now, as the girl approaches, Cecily stares shamelessly. She’s been warned that Marguerite brings no dowry save her looks, so is keen to value them. They’re good, she concludes, but could be much improved by smiling.

Cecily sweeps into her deepest bow as William leans to tell the King’s bride that this is the Duchess of York, most noble of all English ladies, who will be her hostess in Rouen for Easter. ‘And here is her lord, the Duke of York, the King’s cousin and good friend.’

Cecily stays low, head bent, until a thin voice bids her welcome and a small bare hand is reached out for her kiss. Bringing it to her lips, Cecily finds it stiff with cold but not shivering. Looking up into Marguerite’s face she sees tension behind fine dark eyes. The smile, when at last it comes, is fleeting and brittle. She feels an unexpected stab of sympathy. Marguerite is five days short of her fifteenth birthday. Three days ago, in Paris, she bade her world goodbye and gave herself into the hands of strangers to be taken to a man, already her husband in the eyes of law and the Church, who she has never met and cannot know. That in itself is nothing, of course, but when Cecily thinks of who that man is, that blade of sympathy twists a little.

So she puts a welcome into her own smile, takes William’s place at Marguerite’s side, and speaks. ‘We are most happy to receive Your Grace. Will you come aboard where warmth and comfort await you? This quayside is bitter.’