‘Oh no! Thank God! No, it is not that. I don’t know anything at all, nothing more than that I fear for you,’ I assure him. ‘I have not tried to scry or foretell since you told me to put it aside, after the trial of Eleanor Cobham.’

He takes my hands and kisses them, first one and then the other. ‘My love, you must not fear for me. Do I not always tell you I will come home to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have I ever failed you?’

‘Never.’

‘I lost you once and swore I would never lose you again,’ he says.

‘You found me by moonlight.’ I am smiling.

‘By luck,’ he says, a man of earth as always. ‘But I swore then that I would never lose you again. You have nothing to fear.’

‘Nothing,’ I repeat. ‘But I should tell you – I am with child again, and you will have a new baby next summer.’

‘Dear God, I can’t leave you,’ he says at once. ‘This changes everything. I can’t leave you here, not alone with the children, to face another childbed.’

I had hoped he would be pleased; I am determined to hide my own fears. ‘Beloved, I have been brought to bed nine times, I think I know how to do it by now.’

His face is creased with worry. ‘The danger is always the same,’ he says. ‘The danger of childbirth is the same the first time as the last. And you have lost one son, and I thought then your heart would break. Besides, the news from London is bad. The queen is certain to want you at her side, and I will be stuck in Calais with Edmund Beaufort.’

‘If you even get there.’

He falls silent and I know he is thinking of the idle ships and the army that wore out their time with a year of waiting, while their countrymen died outside Bordeaux.

‘Don’t look likt, I should not have said it. I am sure you will get there and then you will hold Calais for us,’ I say quickly.

‘Yes, but I don’t like to leave you here while the king is clinging to Somerset and York is building an affinity of more and more men who think as he does that the king is badly advised.’

I shrug. ‘There is no way out, my love. The baby is coming and I had better have her here, rather than come with you to Calais and give birth in a garrison.’

‘You think it will be another girl?’ he asks.

‘The girls will be the making of this family,’ I predict. ‘You wait and see.’

‘Queens militant?’

‘One of these girls is going to make a marriage which will make our fortunes,’ I say. ‘Why else would God make them so beautiful?’

* * *

I speak bravely enough to Richard but when he musters his men and marches out of the courtyard and down the road to London where they will take ship to Calais, I am very low. My daughter Elizabeth finds me walking with my thick cape around my shoulders, my hands in a fur muff, beside the river, as the frosty banks and the icy reeds match my mood. She comes forwards and links her arm in mine and matches her steps to mine. I am only a head taller than her now, she keeps pace with me easily.