He raises his hand at the buzz of noise. ‘Lord Scales will command,’ he says. ‘We will muster in the courtyard at nine of the clock, weapons will be distributed now. I expect all able-bodied men to arm and come with me.’

He steps down, and men crowd around him at once. I hear him explaining the plan, and sending men to get their weapons. I stand a little closer and wait for him to turn to me.

‘I’ll leave a guard on the Tower,’ he says. ‘Enough to hold it. The king is sending reinforcements from the Midlands, they will be here tomorrow, or the next day. You’ll be safe here until I come back.’

He sees the unspoken question in my face. ‘If I don’t come back, you should put on your plainest clothes and make your way onfoot, out of the City,’ he says. ‘Cutler will go with you or any of our men. Once you are out of the City you can buy or borrow horses to get home. I can’t tell what will happen then. But if you can get home to the children, you can live off our lands, and you should be safe there until it all comes right again. Our tenants would stand by you. Jacquetta, I am sorry. I never thought it would come to this. I didn’t mean to bring you out of France to danger in England.’

‘Because if the rebels take London, then nowhere is safe?’ I ask him. ‘If you cannot drive them out of the City then they will take England in time?’

‘I don’t know how this will end,’ he says. ‘A king who leaves London to the peasants and a half-pay captain? A penniless crowd who say that they own the City? I don’t know what might happen next.’

‘Come back,’ is all I can manage.

‘It is my intention,’ he says tightly. ‘You are the love of my life. I will come back to you if I possibly can. I have sworn it. I am going to be there at the baptism of our new baby, my love. And God willing, make another.’

A vision of the dancing head of Lord Say comes to my mind and I blink to try to rid myself of it. ‘Richard, God send you back safely to me,’ I whisper.

I watch them muster in the great central yard of the Tower and then leave quietly by the sally-port, into the silent streets. I climb to the walkway at the top of the walls that run around the Tower and stand by a soldier on guard to watch them make their way quietly to the City. Richard has them in squares, four men by four men, all of them with pikes, many with swords, most of them with muffled feet. I see all this, but I am trying to see more. I am trying to see if there is a shadow over them, if they are marching out to their death. Especially, I am looking for the tall figure of my husband, at the head of his division, his sword drawn, his hooded head looking this way and the other, every sense alert, vibrantly alive, angry to have been brought to this.