She shakes her head. ‘I am promised,’ she says simply. ‘Promised to God. And when the king calls for me, I must be ready to ride to arms again. I am a soldier in waiting, not a lady in waiting. I will dress like a soldier. And my king will call for me, any day now.’

I glance behind us. A pageboy carrying a jug of hot water is in earshot. I wait till he has nodded a bow and gone past us. ‘Hush,’ I say quietly. ‘You shouldn’t even call him king.’

She laughs, as if she fears nothing. ‘I took him to his coronation, I stood under my own standard in Reims cathedral when he was anointed with the oil of Clovis. I saw him presented to his people in his crown. Of course he is King of France: he is crowned and anointed.’

‘The English slit the tongues of anyone who says that,’ I remind her. ‘That’s for the first offence. The second time you say it, they brand your forehead so you are scarred for life. The English king, Henry VI, is to be called King of France, the one you call the French king is to be called the Dauphin, never anything but the Dauphin.’

She laughs with genuine amusement. ‘He is not even to be called French,’ she exclaims. ‘Your great Duke Bedford says that he is to be called Armagnac. But the great Duke Bedford was shaking with fear and running around Rouen for recruits when I came up to the walls of Paris with the French army – yes, I will say it! – the French army to claim our own city for our king, a French king; and we nearly took it, too.’

I put my hands over my ears. ‘I won’t hear you, and you shouldn’t speak like this. I shall be whipped if I listen to you.’

At once she takes my hands, she is penitent. ‘Ah, Jacquetta, I won’t get you into trouble. Look! I will say nothing. But you must see that I have done far worse than use words against the English. I have used arrows and cannon shot and battering rams and guns against them! The English will hardly trouble themselves over the words I have said and the breeches I wear. I have defeated them and shown everyone that they have no right to France. I led an army against them and defeated them over and over again.’

‘I hope they never get hold of you, and never question you. Not about words, nor arrows, nor cannon.’

She goes a little pale at the thought of it. ‘Please God, I hope so too. Merciful God, I hope so too.’

‘My great-aunt is writing to the Dauphin,’ I say very low. ‘They were speaking of it at dinner last night. She will write to the Dauphin and invite him to ransom you. And my uncle will release you to the Fr . . . to the Armagnacs.’