‘I so want to be able to tell her I am with child,’ she says. ‘That would make her happy, that is the one thing she wants – that everyone wants. But maybe this year. Perhaps one will come for me this year.’ Her eyelids sweep down and she smiles, almost to herself.

‘Oh, dear Margaret, I hope so.’

‘I am more contented,’ she says quietly. ‘I am even hopeful. You need not fear for me, Jacquetta. It is true that I was very unhappy this summer, and even at Christmas time; but I am more contented now. You were a good friend to warn me to take care. I listened to you, I thought about what you said. I know I must not be indiscreet, I have put the duke at a distance and I think everything is going to be all right.’

There is something going on here – I don’t need the Sight to see it. There is a secret here, and a hidden joy. But I cannot complain of her behaviour. She may smile on the duke; but she is always at the side of the king. She does not linger with the duke in the gallery nor let him whisper in her ear any more. He comes to her rooms, as he always has done; but they talk of matters of state and there are always companions with him, and ladies with her. It is when she is alone or quiet among the crowd that I look at her and wonder what she is thinking, when she folds her hands so demurely in her lap and gazes down, her eyes veiled, smiling to herself.

‘And how is your little girl?’ she asks a touch wistfully. ‘Is she well and fat and pretty like all your babies always seem to be?’

‘Thank God she is strong and growing well,’ I say. ‘I called her Eleanor, you know. I sent them all s fairings and we had a couple of days of such fine weather when I was down with them. I took the older ones hunting and the younger ones sledging. I will go back to see them at Easter.’

That night the queen dresses in her new gown of darkest red, a colour no-one has seen before, especially bought for her from the London merchants, and we go into the king’s presence chamber with the ladies behind us. She takes her seat beside the king and the little Beaufort heiress, Margaret, comes into the room, dressed far too ornately, paraded by her shameless mother. The child is wearing a gown of angelic white trimmed with red silk roses, as if to remind everyone that she is the daughter of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, a great name but, God forgive him, not a great man. He was Edmund Beaufort’s older brother but he made a fool of himself in France and came home and died, so promptly and conveniently – just ahead of a charge of treason – that Richard says it was by his own hand and it was the only good thing he ever did for his family. This scrap of a girl with the great name and greater fortune is his daughter, and the niece of Edmund Beaufort.