‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

She turns her face away and rubs her eyes. ‘It is not the same for me. It will never be the same for me. I will never be loved like you are loved. And I think I am dying inside, Jacquetta.’

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

AUTUMN 1452

I withdraw from court in the autumn to spend some time with my children and to make sure that my lands are in good heart at Grafton Manor, and my tenants paying their rents and not whispering behind their hands against the king and court. I am glad to be away. Without the company of Richard I find I am impatient with the flirtations and excitement of the ladies in waiting, and I cannot like the new vindictiveness that I see developing in the king. The Duke of Somerset says that the king is showing his power, growing into majesty; but I cannot admire it. They are calling his progress a ‘harvest of heads’ and saying that every summer he will work his way around the counties where men have risen against him, or even spoken against him, and judge like a modern Solomon. He seems to take equal pleasure in tenderly pardoning as in harsh sentencing; and no man can know, when he is called before this king, whether he is going to meet a saint or a tyrant. Some men are paraded before him naked with a halter round their necks and he sees their shame and their weakness and forgives them with tears, letting them kiss his hands and praying with them. Another old lady defies him with a curse, refuses to confess to anything and she is hanged. The king weeps then too, in sorrow for a sinner.

And I am glad to be away from the queen’s rooms where I see that she grows closer and closer to Edmund Beaufort. They are thrown together all the time by the king’s need of him, and it means that Margaret, still only a young woman of twenty-two, is in the constant company of the man who commands England, who advises her husband, and counsels her. Of course she admires him, her husband holds him up as the very model of a perfect lord. He is the most handsome man at court, he is regarded as the champion of England, and he is clearly in love with her. He looks after her as she goes by, he whispers in her ear he takes her hand on the least pretext and he places himself beside her, her partner in games, her companion in walks, his horse rides next to hers. Of course she knows that she may not feel anything for him but respect and cousinly affection. But she is a young and passionate woman, and he is a seductive man. I think that no power in the world could stop her looking for him, smiling when she sees him and simply glowing with joy when he comes to sit beside her and whispers in her ear.