It is growing dark as we come to one of the many back gates to the rambling palace. I am surprised to find no-one on sentry duty. I would have expected the gates to be closed and manned with a double guard; but it is like the king to be careless, and without my husband who would command the guard?

‘Hi!’ I shout as I come close. ‘Holla! Open the gate!’

Silence. Silence where there are usually scores of people coming and going. Silence where I would have expected a shouted challenge. I rein the horse in, remembering that, when you feel that something is wrong, it is because something is wrong. ‘Open the lantern gate!’ I shout, readying myself to turn the horse and spur her away if we are attacked. ‘Open the lantern gate for the Duchess of Bedford!’ Slowly, the small door in the great gate creaks open, and a stable lad peers nervously out.

‘The Duchess of Bedford?’

I pull down my hood so he can see my face. ‘Myself. Where is everybody?’

His pinched white face looks up at me. ‘Run away,’ he says. ‘Everyone but me and I couldn’t go because my dog is sick, and I didn’t want to leave him. Had I better come with you?’

‘Run where?’

He shrugs. ‘Run away from Captain Mortimer and his army. Some of them ran to join him, some of them ran away.’

I shake my head. I cannot understand this. ‘Where is the king, and the queen?’

‘Run away too,’ he says.

‘For God’s sake! Where are they, boy?’

‘Run away to Kenilworth,’ he whispers. ‘But I was told to tell no-one.’

I grip onto my horse’s mane with cold hands as my heart thuds. ‘What? They have abandoned the City?’

‘They sent out an army to chase Mortimer back to Kent, but Mortimer turned on them and beat them good. The royal commanders were all killed, the army ran back to London except for those that joined Mortimer. Half of them joined Mortimer. I wish I had gone.’

‘Who were the commanders that were killed?’ I ask quietly. My voice is steady, and I am pleased at that.

He shrugs. ‘All the king’s lords, I don’t know: Lord Northumberland, Baron Rivers . . .’

‘They are dead? All of them?’

‘They didn’t come back, at any rate.’

‘The king?’

‘The king wouldn’t go to war,’ he says contemptuously. ‘He went out with his standard but he wouldn’t go to war. He kept half his army back and sent out the lords with the other half. And when what was left of them came running back and said they had lost, he and the queen ran off to Kenilworth, the Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, with them, and Lord Scales went to the Tower.’

‘Is Scales there now? Has he fortified the Tower?’

He shrugs. ‘I dunno. What’s going to happen to me?’ he asks.

I look at him, my face as blank as his own. ‘I don’t know. You’d better look out for yourself.’