‘Your Grace?’ I am dumbfounded at the suggestion that we should restore our lands to the French, and she flushes, as guilty as a child. ‘To hold our lands,’ she corrects herself. ‘Edmund Beaufort is the only man we can trust.’

‘I think that Richard, Duke of York, is the only man to succesfully hold French lands since my first husband, the Duke of Bedford,’ I observe.

She throws her hands in the air. ‘Perhaps, perhaps, but I can trust no-one but Edmund Beaufort and William de la Pole. The king himself can neither take decisions nor lead an army. These men are everything to me. They are the father and’ – she breaks off and blushes – ‘friend that I need. They both deserve the highest of honours, and we will give honours where they are due.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

SUMMER 1449

I can tell at once that something terrible has happened. Richard comes into our private rooms and takes my hands, his face grim. ‘Jacquetta, you must be brave.’

‘Is it the children?’ My first thought is always for them, and my hand goes to my belly where another life is growing.

‘No, thank God. It is my lord’s legacy, the lands of Normandy.’

I don’t really have to ask him, I guesst once. ‘Have they been lost?’

He grimaces. ‘All but. Edmund Beaufort has offered the French almost all of Normandy including Rouen, in return for his safety in Caen.’

‘Rouen,’ I say quietly. My first husband John, Duke of Bedford’s grave is there. I have property there.

‘This is a bitter blow,’ Richard says. ‘And all of us who fought to keep the English lands in France, nearly a hundred years of long warfare, and so many lives lost – good comrades and brothers –’ He breaks off. ‘Well, we will find it hard to forgive the loss.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

SPRING 1450

Richard was right. Nobody can forgive the loss. The parliament turns on William de la Pole, and his new titles and his new honours cannot save him from the rage of the English as the men who had farmed and the soldiers who had fought in Normandy come home defeated and homeless, and complain bitterly, bitterly, at every market cross and crossroads, that they have been betrayed by their commanders who should have stood by them, as they had stood to arms for more than a hundred years.

In the streets the London traders call out to me as I ride by, ‘What would Lord John have thought of it, eh? What would your lord have said?’ and I can do nothing more but shake my head. I feel with them – what did we fight for, what did we die for, if the lands we won are to be handed back as part of a treaty, as part of a marriage, on the whim of a king who never fought for them as we fought for them?

They blame it all on William de la Pole, since it is treason to speak against the king. And they call him to parliament and accuse him of treason, extortion, and murder. They say that he has been planning to seize the throne and set up his little son John and his ward Margaret Beaufort as king and queen, claiming the throne in her right.