He waved his hand airily. ‘Perhaps not but Marguerite wants her son on the throne of England and Warwick wants his daughter as queen. Having failed with the elder daughter Isabel’s marriage to the dissolute Clarence, he will embrace the prospect of succeeding with the younger, little Anne Neville – for whom we will arrange a betrothal. A good dynastic marriage will always seal an alliance and I am very impressed with young Édouard of Lancaster, a fierce lion cub.’

‘Unlike his father, who lives yet,’ I reminded him. ‘I hope you do not expect King Henry to make way for his son?’

‘No, no,’ Louis said impatiently, as if his English cousin were a mere inconvenience. ‘It will happen, all in God’s good time. And fortunately Édouard takes after his mother, who is a formidable woman. She and Warwick will make sparks enough to light a conflagration, from which, God willing, a phoenix will arise.’

‘Or a dragon,’ I suggested dryly. ‘After all Édouard is the Prince of Wales.’

Clearly irritated by this mild pleasantry King Louis paused and stroked his chin, his full lips pursed in thought. ‘We made a mistake sending you to Wales last year, Jasper,’ he observed. ‘It achieved nothing and cost too much – and it led to the loss of that dragon’s lair of yours with the unpronounceable name – Ar-leck is it?’

It was not the first time he had brought up the subject of my recent attempt to bolster Lancaster’s Welsh standing by re-capturing Denbigh, an expedition badly under-funded at the last minute by Louis’s Exchequer. My siege on the castle had failed as a result but I had followed it with a devastating chevauchée through the Yorkist Vale of Clwyd and a furious William Herbert had taken revenge for this by throwing a vast siege army at Harlech Castle. Lancaster had lost its last toehold in Wales and Herbert had been granted my earldom of Pembroke as a reward, both humiliating events for me.

‘At least Herbert will not be staging any more revenge raids. We have Warwick to thank for that,’ I reminded him.’

‘Yes, so we do. The earl is rather prone to cutting off heads is he not?’ Louis observed tartly.

‘Does that bother you?’ I asked in surprise.

‘No, but I thought it might concern you, or will you hope to return to England on good terms with Monsieur le “Kingmaker”?’

I made an ambivalent gesture. ‘I share his scorn for the men whose heads he removed but I am not sure I think him any more honourable than them. I wonder if he would have sent them to the scaffold had they been old nobility, as he considers himself, instead of what you French call arrivistes. However, there is no doubt that Warwick has done us a favour by removing a few Herberts and Woodvilles from the political scene.’