Almost every day he brings her a little gift, a posy of flowers, a poem, a little lad to dance for her, a kitten. The king and queen and the duke travel around the green lanes of Dorset in absolute accord, and whenever the queen steps down from her litter or turns to go up a stair, the duke’s hand is out to support her, his arm to hold her steady.

I had seen him before as a charmer, a seducer, a rogue; but now I see something better in him, a man of great tenderness. He treats her as if he would spare her any fatigue, as if he has dedicated his life to her happiness. He serves the king as a most loyal friend and he serves her as a knight of chivalry. More than this, I don’t want to see; I won’t let myself see.

In August we reach Wiltshire, and stay at the old royal palace at Clarendon, in the lush water meadows near Salisbury. I love this chalk meadowland and the broad watery valleys. The runs after the deer go on for hours through the woodland of the valley floors and then we burst out onto the high downland and gallop across the even cropped grass. When we halt to eat we can see half of England spread before us. The palace is set among flowering meads, flooded into lakes for half the year, but a network of clean streams and pools and rivers in this high summer. The duke takes the queen fishing and swears that they will catch a salmon for her dinner, but they spend most of the day with her resting in the shade while he casts a line and gives her the rod to hold, and then casts the line again as the dragon-flies dance over the kingcups and the swallows fly low over the water, skimming their little beaks into their own darting reflections.

We come home late in the evening as the clouds in the sky are like peach and lemon ribbons, swirled above the horizon. ‘It will be another beautiful day tomorrow,’ the duke predicts.

‘And the next day?’ she asks him.

‘Why not? Why should you not have a beautiful day every day of your life?’

She laughs. ‘You would spoil me.’

‘I would,’ he says sweetly. ‘I would like you to have a beautiful day every day.’

She takes his arm to help her up the stone steps to the great front door of the hunting lodge. ‘Where is the king?’ he asks one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber.

‘In the chapel, Your Grace,’ the man replies. ‘With his confessor.’

‘I’ll come to your rooms then,’ Edmund Beaufort says to the queen. ‘Shall I sit with you before dinner?’

‘Yes, come,’ she says.

The ladies arrange themselves on stools and the window-seats, the queen and the duke sit in a window embrasure, talking quietly together, their heads close, and then there is a knock and the doors are thrown open for a messenger from France, who comes hastily in, dirty from the road, and with his face grave. Nobody could doubt for a moment that he brings bad news.