When they arrive there, the girl’s hand reaches for the latch, then falters. She turns to Cecily as if she has made a decision. ‘Your king, I am given to understand, is a man most devout, whose wish for peace with France is most earnest?’

Cecily feels surprise, a little, but schools it. ‘I believe it to be his most heartfelt desire.’ At least it is now, since John Beaufort’s flame went out.

The girl nods. ‘Good. It will be my happy duty to help him secure it. And to change the hearts of any among his nobles who oppose that great enterprise.’

Cecily draws a breath to speak, but the door is open before she can do so. She has barely time to sketch a curtsey before it closes again and Marguerite is gone. She blinks, shakes her head and feels her eyes widen. Has this chit of a girl, not half her age, just issued a warning? She acknowledges the hit with a release of breath, turns on her heel and makes her lantern-lit way back to the warmth, where Richard, William and Alice still pick at carcasses; the new Queen and the terms that bring her to England.

In those terms Cecily finds good cause for the grey hairs on William’s head and the lines that draw his mouth into a frown. He has spent a year and more, he complains, securing a deal that damns him both ways. Those in England who want an end to fighting say he has given too much for too little; that a truce is not a peace and he has sold his king into an impoverished marriage for little more than a reprieve. Those few with a will to fight on despise him utterly and spit through their teeth at the idea of a Frenchwoman bearing heirs for England.

‘Have they forgotten that the King’s own mother was French?’ asks Richard.

‘Certainly not,’ Alice informs him. ‘But dying was the only thing she did that ever pleased the English.’

‘Either way, Marguerite’s welcome will be a cold one,’ says Cecily. She leans forward. ‘But anyway, now you can tell us, William, why Marguerite? Would the King of France not at least offer one of his own daughters?’

‘Charles would not offer a daughter, and Henry would not take one from his hands,’ says William. ‘He says, if Charles wants to marry a daughter to England, let him have one of York’s sons. He himself will have none of them. He says, in fact, that you should make an offer.’

Richard shakes his head and Cecily laughs. ‘Ha! If Charles won’t give a daughter to England’s king, he certainly won’t give one to York’s heir. What folly.’ Too foolish to think of. ‘But why not for himself, does he still fear the old family madness?’

He shrugs. It seems that’s not a subject he’s willing to be drawn on.