‘Will they beg for forgiveness?’

‘The king has sent pardons already,’ he says, his eyes closed as I pour a jug of hot water over his head. ‘Hundreds of them, blank forms of pardons. Hundreds of them, without a thought. And a bishop to fill in the names. They are all to be forgiven and told to go home.’

‘Just like that?’ I ask.

‘Just like that,’ he says.

‘Do you think they will each take a pardon and go home and forget all about it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘But the king hopes that they were misled and mistaken and that they have learned their lesson and will accept his rule. He wants to think that it is all the fault of a bad leader and the rest of them were just mistaken.’

‘Queen Margaret won’t think that,’ I predict, knowing the power of her temper and that she learned how to rule over a peasantry who were held down by force and deference.

‘No she won’t. But the king has decided on pardons, whatever she thinks.’

* * *

Jack Cade’s army, which was so brave and so filled with hope for a better world, lines up to take the pardons, and seems to be glad to do so. Each man says his name and Bishop William Waynflete’s clerk, in the rebel camp with a little writing desk, writes each name down and tells each man to go home, that the king has forgiven his offence. The bishop blesses them, signing the cross over each bowed head, and tells them to go in peace. Jack Cade himself lines up for his piece of paper and is publicly forgiven for leading an army against the king, killing a noble lord and invading London. Some men see this as the king’s weakness, but the greatest number of them think themselves lucky to get off scot-free, and they go back to their poor homes where they cannot pay their taxes, where they cannot get justice, where the great lords ride roughshod over them – and hope for better times. They are just as they were before; but more bitter – and still the good times have not come.

But not Cade. I find my husband in the stables, his face dark with temper, ordering our horses in a bellowing voice. It seems that we are going back to Grafton, we are going back to Grafton ‘at once!’, the roads are safe enough if we take a good guard.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. ‘Why are we going now? Isn’t the king coming? Should we not stay in London?’

‘I can’t stand to see him, nor her,’ he says flatly. ‘I want to go home for a while. We’ll come back, of course we will, we will come back the moment they send for us; but before God, Jacquetta, I cannot stomach the court a moment longer.’

‘Why? What has happened?’

He is tying his travelling cape on the back of his saddle and his back is to me. I go behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. Slowly he turns to face me. ‘I see you’re angry,’ I say. ‘But speak to me: tell me what has happened.’