We are helped in our rule of silence by the fact that most of the lords and gentry had left London for the summer and are slow to return. The duke does not summon parliament so the country gentry have no reason to come into the city, and everything that has to be decided in the kingdom is done with a handful of men in the king’s council in the name of the king but under the signature of the duke. He tells them that the king is unwell, too fatigued to come to council and he, Edmund Beaufort, as his most trusted kinsman will hold the king’s seal and use it to ratify any decision. Almost no-one suspects that the king is quite incapable of coming to the council. Most of them think he is in his private chapel, praying for the health of the queen, studying in silence, and that he has given the seal and the authority to Edmund Beaufort, who has always commanded so much anyway.

But the rumours start, as they are bound to do. The cooks remark that they never send good joints of meat into the king’s rooms but only soups, and then some fool of a groom says that the king cannot chew his food, and then hushes himself and says, ‘God save him!’ and takes himself off. Of course the physicians come and go in and out of the king’s rooms and anyone seeing them is bks tice that there are strange doctors and physicians, herbalists and practitioners of all sorts coming at the bidding of the duke and going into the king’s rooms. The physicians would not dare to speak; but they are attended by servants and have messengers bringing them herbs and physic. After a week of this, the duke invites me to his rooms and asks me to tell the queen that it is his advice that the king be taken to Windsor, where they can more easily nurse him without the news getting out.

‘She won’t like it,’ I tell him frankly. ‘She won’t like him being kept there, and her trapped here in confinement.’

‘If he stays here then people will start to talk,’ he says. ‘We cannot keep it secret. And she will want to avoid gossip more than anything else.’

I curtsey and go to the door.

‘What do you think?’ he asks me as my hand is on the latch. ‘What do you think, Your Grace? You’re a woman of gifts. What do you think will become of the king? And what of the queen if he never recovers?’

I say nothing. I am too old a hand at court to be led into speculation about the future of a king by the man who is standing in his shoes.

‘You must have thoughts,’ he says impatiently.

‘I may have thoughts; but I have no words,’ I say and leave him. But that night I dream of the Fisher King of the legend: a country commanded by a king too frail and too weak to do anything but go fishing, while a young woman has to rule the land alone, and longs for a man who can stand at her side.