I wait on the quayside until I see him at the rail, and I kiss my cold hand to him. ‘Come back soon,’ I call. ‘Be safe. Come back soon.’

‘I always come back to you,’ he calls back. ‘You know that. I will come back soon.’

The dark nights grow shorter, but the king does not recover. Some alchemists predict that the sunshine will bring him to life as if he were a seed in the darkness of the earth, and they wheel him to an eastern window every morning and make him face the grey disc of the wintry sun. But nothing wakes him.

Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, is not released from his rooms in the Tower of London; but neither is he accused. Richard, Duke of York, has enough power over the council of lords to make them arrest the duke, but not enough to persuade them to try him for treason.

‘I am going to see him,’ the queen announces.

‘Your Grace, people will talk,’ I warn her. ‘They are already saying things about you that don’t bear repeating.’

She raises an eyebrow.

‘So I won’t repeat them,’ I say.

‘I know what they are saying,’ she declares boldly. ‘They are saying that he is my lover and that the prince is his son, and this is why my husband the king has not acknowledged him.’

‘Reason enough not to visit him,’ I caution.

‘I have to see him.’

‘Your Grace . . .’

‘Jacquetta, I have to.’

* * *

I go with her, and take two of her other ladies. They wait outside while the queen and I go into his rooms. He has a privy chamber with a bedroom beside it. The rooms, stone-walled with arrowslit windows, are pleasant enough, close to the royal apartments in the White Tower; he is not by any means in a dungeon. He has a table and a chair and some books, but he is pale from being kept indoors and he is looking thinner. His face lights up when he sees her and he drops to his knee. She hurries towards him and he passionately kisses her hands. The Constable of the Tower stands at the door, his back turned tactfully to the room. I wait at the window looking out over the grey tide of the cold river. Behind me, I can hear the duke rise to his feet and I can sense him mastering himself so that he does not reach for her.

‘Will you sit, Your Grace?’ he asks quietly and puts the chair near the little fire for her.

‘You can sit beside me,’ she says. I turn and see him pull up a small stool, so they are close enough to whisper.

They are hand-clasped, his mouth to her ear, her turning to murmur to him, for half an hour, but when I hear the clock strike three, I go forwards and curtsey before her. ‘Your Grace, we have to go,’ I say.