I gasp. ‘Oh, I am so pleased. I am so very pleased for you. And for our children too! We will be so very grand.’ I pause uncertainly. ‘Can the king just make up titles like this?’

‘The two of them think they can and, what is more dangerous: they do. Never was a young couple with so little power and money in more of a hurry to give it all away. And they will drive the rest of the court mad. Anyone that she likes, or that he trusts, gets loaded with favours; but good men are excluded. Richard, Duke of York, gets nothing, not even a civil hearing. They say they won’t have him in the council now; though he is known as a good man and the best advisor they could have. But he is ignored and worse men than he are praised to the skies. I shall be made a baron for no better reason than you keep her company.’

‘And what name shall we have, my lord? You will be Sir Richard Woodville, Baron – what?’

He pauses for a moment. ‘Baron Grafton?’ he asks.

‘Baron Grafton,’ I repeat, listening to the sounds. Even after all these years in England I still have a strong accent. ‘I really can’t say it.’

‘But I wondered if you would like a title which came from your family. One of your family names?’

I think for a moment. ‘I don’t really wantremind everyone that I am a daughter of Luxembourg, that I am French,’ I say cautiously. ‘The mood is more and more against the French. I was telling the queen, only the other day, that she should speak English in public. I am an English dowager duchess and I am a good Englishwoman now. Give me an English name and let our children have English titles.’

‘Water!’ he exclaims. ‘For your ancestor.’

I laugh. ‘You can’t be Baron Water. But what about Baron Rivers?’

‘Rivers . . .’ He rolls the word over in his mouth. ‘That’s fine. Rivers. It’s a good English name, and yet it is a tribute to your family. Baron Rivers I shall be and, please God, one day I shall be an earl.’

‘No, really, would they ever make you an earl? Would they give away so much?’

‘My dear, I am afraid they would give away the kingdom itself. They are not careful monarchs and they are advised by rogues.’

* * *

I mention my husband’s anxiety about their extravagance as tactfully as I can to the queen but she tosses her head. ‘We have to keep our friends satisfied,’ she says to me. ‘We cannot rule the country without William de la Pole: he is the greatest man in the land. And Edmund Beaufort is in such debt! We have to help him.’

‘Richard Duke of York?’ I suggest as a man they should reward.

‘We cannot hold France without Edmund Beaufort. He is the only man we could trust to hold our French lands, and to restore those lands that we should return to their true owner.’