Richard had addressed himself to the man he thought mattered. ‘Your Grace, you know I work for peace as hard as any man, but our truce is not yet a treaty. And while we starve our garrisons of funds and men, Charles is building a standing army. If we want to bring him to a peace we must at least make him believe we’re willing to fight for what’s ours.’

‘Indeed,’ Cecily shrugged. ‘Or what need Charles to come to terms at all?’

Richard held out his hands. ‘Exact.’

‘So, what did the King say then?’

‘That I should have more faith in his dear wife’s uncle.’

‘Can he really be so simple?’

Richard grimaced, shrugged his shoulders. ‘And then, of course, Gloucester was on his feet, spitting and snarling with his usual tirade: that Henry is giving away his father’s legacy; that England must fight on in France. That the Queen is Charles’s spy in the King’s bed.’

‘Perhaps he’s right. About the Queen anyway. But dare he really accuse the King so openly?’

‘Oh, he’s sense at least to blame Suffolk and Beaufort for leading Henry by the nose.’

She laughed. ‘Right again!’ Then more serious, ‘But he should have a care. He courts powerful enemies.’ She did not say, as might you. And the Queen among them.

‘And he prevents my voice from being heard. I find myself playing Edmund’s game, vying like a doxy for time with the King, for only when I can get him alone can I talk sense to him. And every other moment of the day I’m wondering what foolishness is being poured into his ears by others.’

‘Last summer, William de la Pole was on your side, telling the King to spend money in France.’

‘Well, he is very silent on the subject now.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

Richard turned the bull’s blood ruby ring about his finger three more times before answering her. ‘Because the King told him he sounded like the Duke of Gloucester.’ He turned from the fire then, and looked into Cecily’s eyes. ‘William says, when you start to sound like Gloucester, it’s probably time to shut up.’

‘My Lady Cecily,’ the king’s voice calls to her now, from ahead.

She gives Richard a rueful smile and strides forward to where Henry and Marguerite stand, and where Edmund Beaufort and William de la Pole strut like peacocks amid a clutch of clerics.

‘Lady Cecily –’ the King welcomes her as she approaches, and Richard, who has fallen in behind her – ‘you, more than any, must see what we do here.’