The queen and the ladies of her court go down to the frosty jousting green at Westminster to see the parade of the lords ride by on their way out to do battle with the Duke of York.

‘I wish your husband were here to support him,’ she says to me as the king mounts his great grey war horse, his standard before him and his crown on his helmet. He looks much younger than his thirty years, his eyes bright and eager; his smile, as he waves to Margaret, is excited.

‘God save him,’ I say, thinking of the battle-hardened forty-year-old Duke of York mustering his own men.

The trumpets blow, the drummers sound the pace of the march, the cavalry go out first, their standards bright in the icy sunlight, their armour glinting, their horseshoes thunderous on the cobbles, and then after them come the archers and after them the pikemen. This is only a small part of the royal army; tens of thousands of men are waiting for the king’s orders at Blackheath. His councillors have mustered a mighty army for him. From there he will march north to confront the rebel duke.

The march does not happen. Richard, Duke of York, comes into the royal tent and kneels before his king, praying earnestly that the king dismiss the favoured Duke of Somerset and citing old injuries: the loss of the lands in France, the shameful surrender of Rouen, and finally the likely destruction of the garrison of Calais by his selfish seizing of command, which is certain to fail.

He can do no more, he can say no more.

‘We don’t care,’ Margaret says to me, as I brush her hair before bed that evening. ‘We don’t care what he thinks of Edmund Beaufort, we don’t care what he says about Calais, or about me, or about you. He knew he was defeated when we raised an army three times the size of his. He knew he would have to withdraw everything he said. He knew he would have to beg our pardon. He is a broken man. His rebellion is ended. We have broken him.’

I say nothing. The duke does indeed kneel to the king in public and swear never to assemble his men again. The country sees that the king is beloved and the duke is not. The country sees that Edmund Beaufort is unassailable and the Duke of York is defeated.

‘I don’t doubt the duke is outwardly penitent; but I doubt that the duke’s complaints are over,’ Richard writes to me from Calais.

The royal couple at any rate are united in their joy. Margaret treats her young husband as if he had returned victorious from a mighty war. ‘He rode out,’ she justifies herself to me. ‘And if there had been fighting I believe he would have led it. He was at the head of his army and he didn’t run for Kenilworth.’

The king takes to riding out every day in his beautifully engraved armour, as if to be ready for anything. Edmund Beaufort comes back from Calais and ridwoueside him, his dark handsome face turned attentively to the king, agreeing with everything he says. The court moves to Windsor, and in an excess of happiness the king offers a pardon to everybody, for anything.