‘It is sorry work,’ Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, remarks to me, as he sees me walk slowly back from chapel to the queen’s rooms at Exeter. ‘But you must not let yourself be saddened by the sins of the country people, my lady.’

I glance at him, he seems genuinely concerned. ‘I saw the cost to them of the expedition that never sailed,’ I say briefly. ‘It was my husband who quartered the soldiers on them. We knew at the time that it was hard. And this is another price that they have to pay.’

He takes my hand and tucks it into his arm. ‘And there was a heavy cost to you,’ he says sympathetically. ‘It was hard on you, I know, and on your husband, Lord Rivers. There is no better commander in England, and no safer man to hold Calais. There was no doubt in my mind he did everything he could to keep the army ready.’

‘He did,’ I say. ‘And he will do everything in Calais, but if the king sends no wages to pay the troops then the garrison will turn against us. Just as Kent turned against us, just as Devon is turning against us now.’

He nods. ‘I am trying, my lady,’ he says, as if he is answerable to me. ‘You can tell your husband that he is never far from my thoughts. I am Constable of Calais, I never forget my duty to your husband and the garrison. There is no money in the treasury and the court eats gold, every time we move it is a small fortune, and the king, God bless him, will have all the money for the colleges he is building to the glory of God, and for his friends who strive for their own glory. But I am trying, I will satisfy the king and I will not see your husband and his comrade Lord Welles left short of funds in Calais.’

‘I am glad of it,’ I reply quietly. ‘I thank you for him.’

‘And now we are sending an expedition to Bordeaux, as we promised,’ he says brightly.

‘Bordeaux?’ I say blankly. ‘Bordeaux again?’

He nods. ‘We have to support the English in France,’ he says. ‘They are overrun by the French but they swear they will defy them and open the gates of Bordeaux to us if we can only get an army out to them. We can recapture the lands we lost. I am going to send John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury. You will remember him well, of course.’

John Talbot was one of my first husband’s most loyal and trusted commanders, famous for lightning raids and his utter bloody determination to win. But he is old now, and after he was captured and released by the French he made a sacred promise never again to arm against the French king. ‘Surely he is too old to go to war,’ I say. ‘He must be sixty if he is a day.’