‘My children have to take their place in the world.’

‘You are ambitious,’ he says.

‘I am not! I was the first lady in France. I have been as high as any woman could dream. And I gave it up for love.’

‘You’re ambitious for your family and for your children. And you’re ambitious for me – you like me being a baron.’

‘Oh well, a baron,’ I say, laughing. ‘Anyone would want their husband to be a baron. I don’t count that as being ambitious. That is just . . . understandable.’

‘And I understand it,’ he says agreeably. ‘But would you really want to live always in the country and not go back to court?’

I think for a moment of the nervous king and the young queen. ‘We couldn’t leave them, could we?’ I ask wistfully.

He shakes his head. ‘It is our duty to serve the House of Lancaster, and – something else – I don’t know how they would manage without us. I don’t think we could just walk away and leave them. What would they do?’

* * *

We stay at Grafton for a week. It is the best time of the year, the orchards are rose-pink with the bobbing blossoms, and the cows are calving. The lambs are with their mothers in the higher meadows, running and frisking with their tails like woolly ribbons dancing behind them. The hay in the meadows is growing tall and starting to ripple in the wind and the crops are green and rich, ankle-deep. My older children, Elizabeth, Lewis, Anne and Anthony, have been staying with our cousins, to learn their manners and how to behave in a great household, but they come home to be with us for the summer. The four little ones, Mary, Jacquetta, John, and Richard, are beside themselves with excitement at having their big sisters and brothers home. Mary, the seven-year-old, is the leader of the little battalion, the others her sworn liegemen.

I am weary with this new pregnancy and in the warm afternoons I take the four-year-old, little Diccon, in my arms for his afternoon nap and we lie down together, drowsy in the warmth of the day. When he is asleep and it is very quiet, I sometimes take the painted cards and turn them over, one after another, and look at them. I don’t shuffle them or deal them out, I don’t attempt to read them. I just look at the familiar pictures and wonder what life will bring me, and these my beloved children.

In the day Richard listens to the unending complaints of the people around us: the moving of a fence line, of cattle being allowed to stray and spoiling a crop. As lord of the manor it is his job to ensure that the rule of law and justice runs throughout our lands, whether or not our neighbours take bribes and order jurors what sentence they should bring in. Richard visits the local gentry to remind them of their duty to turn out for him in case of need, and tries to reassure them that the king is a strong lord, that the court is trustworthy, that the treasury is secure and that we will keep the remaining lands in France.