* * *

I hardly know where to go in London to get news. My house has been closed down, there is no-one there but a few guards for safety, the parliament is not sitting, the Duke of York is no friend of mine. In the end I go to the wife of Lord Welles who is commanding in Calais with Richard. My manservant announces me and I walk into her solar chamber.

‘I can guess why you have come,’ she says, rising and kissing me formally on the cheek. ‘How is Her Grace the queen?’

‘She is well in her health, thank God.’

‘And the king?’

‘God bless him, he is no better.’

She nods and sits down and gestures me to take a stool near hers. Her two daughters come forwards with a glass of wine and biscuits, and then step back, as well-behaved girls should do, so that the adults can talk in private.

‘Charming girls,’ I remark.

She nods. She knows I have sons who will have to marry well.

‘The oldest one is betrothed,’ she says delicately.

I smile. ‘I hope she will be happy. I have come to you for news of my husband. I have heard nothing. Have you any news of Calais?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘I am sorry. There is no news to be had. The last ship to get out of the port said that there was an uprising, the soldiers insisting on their pay. They had captured the wool store and were selling the goods for their own profit. They were holding the ships in the harbour. Since then the merchants will not send their cargoes to Calais for fear that their own stocks are captured. So I don’t know anything, and I can’t get any news.’

‘Did they say what your husband, or mine, was doing?’ I ask. I have a great feeling of dread that Richard would not sit idly by while his men took the law into their own hands.

‘I know they are both alive,’ she says. ‘Or at any rate they were three weeks ago. I know your husband cautioned the men and said that what they were doing was common theft, and they threw him into a cell.’ She sees the terror on my face and puts her hand on mine. ‘Really, they did not hurt him but locked him up. You will have to be brave, my dear.’

I swallow down the tears. ‘It has been so long since we have been at home together,’ I say. ‘And he has had one hard service after another.’

‘We are all lost under the rule of a sleeping king,’ she says gently. ‘The tenants on my lands say that nothing will grow, nothing will ever grow in a kingdom where the king himself lies like a fallow field. Will you go back to court?’

I give a little sigh. ‘I have to,’ I say simply. ‘The queen commands it, and the king says nothing.’