In Westminster I wait for my week and then I know that the morning has come when I wake again at dawn, wake as if I am alert in every part of my body and my mind is clear as the cold water washing round the pier. The four threads are there, safely tied to the leg of the pier, and I hope with all my heart that when I choose a black thread it will pull out the white ribbon on the crown so that I can see that the king will return to us this winter.

The sun is coming up as I put my hand on the threads and I look east towards it, as it rises over the heart of England. There is a dazzle on the water from the rising sun, a wintry sun, a white and gold and silver wintry sun, in a cold blue sky, and as it rises and the mist swirls off the river I see the most extraordinary sight: not one sun but three. I see three suns: one in the sky and two just above the water, reflections of mist and water, but clearly three suns. I blink and then rub my eyes but the three suns blaze at me as I pull on the thread and I find it comes lightly, too lightly, into my hand. I don’t have the thread with the white ribbon that would mean the king would come back to us in winter, nor even the green which would mean the king would come back to us in spring. I pull on one thread after another and find all four ribbons empty with no crown; there is no crown at all. The king will never come back to us: instead there will be the rise of a new dawn, and the suns in splendour.

I walk slowly back to the palace, a bunch of wet ribbons in my hand, and I wonder what three suns over England can mean. As I near the queen’s rooms I can hear noise, soldiers grounding their weapons, and shouting. I pick up my long gown and hurry forwards. Outside her presence chamber there are men in the livery of Richard, Duke of York, his white rose on their collar. The doors are flung open to reveal the queen’s personal guards standing irresolute as the queen shouts at them in French. Her women are screaming and running inwards to the privy chamber, and two or three of the lords of the council are trying to command quiet, as York’s guard get hold of Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, and march him out of the chamber and past me. He casts one furious look at me, but they take him past too fast for me to say anything, not even to ask where he is going. The queen comes flying out after him and I catch her, and hold her, as she bursts into a flood of tears.

‘Traitors! Treason!’