People ask me where my husband is, and what is his view. I say grimly that he is overseas, serving his king in Calais. I do not proffer his view which I don’t know; nor my own – which is that the world has run mad and there will be three suns in the sky before all this is over. I write to him, and send messages by the trading ships that go between here and Calais, but I think the messages do not always get through. In early March I write shortly, ‘I am with child again,’ but he does not reply, and then I know for sure that either they are not delivering my messages, or he is unable to write.

He was appointed as commander in Calais under the captaincy of the Duke of Somerset. Now the Duke of Somerset is in the Tower, charged with treason. What should a loyal commander do? What will the garrison do?

The lords and parliament go again to Windsor to see the king.

‘Why do they keep going?’ the queen demands, seeing the barges come back to the steps at the palace, and the great men in their furred robes helped ashore by their liveried servants. They trudge up the steps like men whose hopes have failed. ‘They must know he won’t wake. I went myself and shouted at him and he didn’t wake. Why would he wake for them? Why don’t they see that they have to make me regent and then I can hold down the Duke of York and his allies and restore peace to England?’

‘They keep hoping,’ I say. I stand beside her at the window and we watch the doleful procession of the lords wind their way to the great hall. ‘Now they will have to nominate a regent. They can’t go on without any king at all.’

‘They will have to nominate me,’ she says. She sets her jaw and stands a little taller. She is queenly, she believes she is called by God to rise into a yet greater role. ‘I am ready to serve,’ she says. ‘I will keep this country safe, and hand it to my son when he is a man. I will do my duty as Queen of England. If they make me regent I will bring peace to England.’

* * *

They make the Duke of York regent and they call him ‘Protector of the Realm’.

‘What?’ Margaret is beside herself, striding up and down the privy chamber. She kicks a footstool and sends it flying, a maid in waiting lets out a sob and cowers in the window, the rest of the ladies are frozen with terror. ‘They called him what?’

The hapless knight who brought the message from the council of the lords trembles before her. ‘They named him as Protector of the Realm.’

‘And what am I to do?’ she demands of him. She means the question to be rhetorical. ‘What do they suggest that I do, while this duke, this mere kinsman, this paltry cousin of mine, thinks to rule my kingdom? What do they think that I, a princess of France, a queen of England, am going to do, when a jumped-up duke from nowhere thinks to pass laws in my land?’