‘My books,’ I say and jump up to the dais and through the door behind the great table and up the short flight of stairs into the upstairs solar. From there it is two steps through a wreckage of precious broken glass, into the gallery, and there I pause, and look around me.

They have taken the brass grilles off the shelves, they have taken the brass chains that fettered the books to the reading desks. They have even taken the quills and the pots of ink. But the books are safe, the books are untouched. They have stolen everything made of metal but damaged nothing of paper. I snatch up a slim volume and hold it to my cheek.

‘Get these safe,’ I say to Cutler. ‘Get your men in to put them in the cellar and board it up and mount a guard. These are worth more than the brass grilles, more than the tapestries. If we can salvage these then I can meet my first husband at the Last Day of Judgement. They were his treasures and he trusted them to me.’

He nods. ‘I am sorry about the rest of it . . .’ He gestures at the wrecked house where the wooden staircase is scarred by sword cuts. Someone has hacked off the carved newel post, and taken itaway, as if to behead me by proxy. In the painted beams above, there is smoke blackening the ceiling. Someone tried to burn us to the ground. I shudder at the smell of the scorched plaster.

‘If the books are safe, and my lord is safe, then I can start again,’ I say. ‘Board the books up for me, Cutler. And take down the big tapestry too, and anything else you find of value. Thank God we took the best stuff with us to Grafton.’

‘What will you do?’ he asks. ‘My lord will want you to find a safe haven. I should go with you.’

‘I’ll go to the palace,’ I say. ‘I’ll go to Westminster. Meet me there.’

‘Take two men with you,’ he advises. ‘I will make all safe here. And then we’ll follow you.’ He hesitates. ‘I have seen worse done,’ he volunteers. ‘It looks as if they came through on a whim and took anything that was of great value. It was not an assault. You need not fear them. It was not directed at you. They are people driven to despair by poverty and fear of the lords. They are not bad people. It’s just they cannot bear it any more.’

I look around the smoke-blackened hall, at the spaces where the missing tapestries used to be and the hacked banister. ‘No, it was an assault,’ I say slowly. ‘They did all that they wanted to do. It was not directed at me – but it was directed at the lords, at the wealthy, at the court. They no longer think that they have to wait at the gates, they no longer think they have no choice but to beg. They no longer think that we command them by right. When I was a girl in Paris and married to the Duke of Bedford we were hated by the people of the city, by the people of France. We knew it, and they knew it. But nobody even dreamed that they could breach the gates and come inside and destroy our things. They think this now in London. They no longer obey their masters. Who knows where they will stop?’