At that name, my heart sinks. What has he done now? Slowly, I go to the door, tap on the panel, and then try the handle. It opens, and I step inside.

At once I remember what a young woman she is, just twenty years old. She looks very small in the big royal bed, lying hunched up as if wounded in the belly, her back to the room, her face to the wall. Alice de la Pole is seated on a stool by the fire, her face buried in her hands.

‘C’est moi,’ I whisper. ‘It’s me. What’s wrong?’

The little queen shakes her head. Her headdress has fallen off, her hair is tumbled all around her, her shoulders are shaking with silent sobs. ‘He’s dead,’ is all she says, as if her world has ended. ‘Dead. What will I do?’

I stagger and put my hand out to steady myself. ‘My God, the king?’

Violently, she bangs her head into her pillow. ‘No! No!’

‘Your father?’

‘William. William . . . my God, William.’

I look at Alice, his widow. ‘I am sorry for your loss, my lady.’

She nods.

‘But how?

Margaret raises herself on her elbow and looks over her shoulder at me. Her hair is a mass of gold, her eyes red. ‘Murdered,’ she spits.

At once, I glance at the door behind me, as if a killer might come in for us. ‘By whom, Your Grace?’

‘I don’t know. That wicked Duke of York? Other lords? Anyone who is cowardly and vile and wants to pull us down and destroy us. Anyone who denies our right to govern as we wish, with the help of whoever we choose. Anyone who sails in secret and attacks an innocent man.’

‘They caught him at sea?’

‘They took him on board their ship and beheaded him on the deck,’ she says, her voice nearly muffled by sobs. ‘God damn them to hell for cowards. They left his body on the beach at Dover. Jacquetta!’ Blindly, she reaches out to me and clings to me as she wails. ‘They put his head on a pole. They left his head like a traitor’s head. How shall I bear this? How shall Alice bear this?’

I hardly dare to glance over to William de la Pole’s widow, who sits in silence while William de la Pole’s queen is breaking her heart over him.

‘Do we know who?’ I repeat. My first fear is, if someone dares to attack the king’s favourite advisor, who will they come for next? The queen? Me?

She is crying so hard she cannot speak, her slender body is shaking in my arms. ‘I must go to the king,’ she says finally, pulling herself up and wiping her eyes. ‘This will have broken his heart. How will we manage without him? Who will advise us?’

Dumbly, I shake my head. I don’t know how they will manage without William de la Pole, nor what sort of world is opening before us when a noble lord in his own ship can be kidnapped and beheaded with a rusty sword on a rocking boat and his head left on a pike on the beach.