This miserable story makes me ridiculously sentimental and I feel disposed to sit and weep and brood over my boys at Grafton, wis that I will never see again, and my oldest, Anthony, thirteen this year, who must soon have his own armour and go and serve as a squire to his father or another great man. He has grown up in no time, and I wish he were a baby again and I could carry him on my hip. It makes me long to be with Richard again, we have never been so long apart in our lives before. When the Duke of York is thrown down by the king, then Edmund Beaufort will take up his command in Calais and order Richard home, and our lives can get back to normal once more.

Margaret summons me to her bedroom and I go to sit with her as they lift the tight headdress which fits like a cap, low over her ears, uncoil the plaits and brush out her hair. ‘When do you think they will come home?’ she asks.

‘Within the week?’ I guess. ‘If all goes well.’

‘Why should it not all go well?’

I shake my head. I don’t know why she should not be happy and excited, as she was when this plan was first explained to her by the Duke of Somerset. I don’t know why the palace, which is always such a pretty home for the court, should seem so cold and lonely tonight. I don’t know why the girl should have picked a story about a son and heir who melts away before he can inherit.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I shiver. ‘I expect it will all be well.’

‘I am going to bed,’ she says crossly. ‘And in the morning we can go hunting and be merry. You are poor company, Jacquetta. Go to bed yourself.’

I don’t go to bed as she bids me, though I know I am poor company. I go to my window and I swing open the wooden shutter and I look down over the water meadows in the moonlight and the long silver curve of the river, and I wonder why I feel so very low in my spirits on a warm May night in England, the prettiest month of the year, when my husband is coming home to me after grave danger, and the King of England is riding out in his power and his enemy is to be brought down.

* * *

Then, the next day, in the late afternoon, we get news, terrible news, unbelievable news. Nothing is clear to us, as we order messengers to be brought before the queen, as we demand that men scrambling away from some sort of battle are captured and brought to the royal chambers to say what they saw, as we send men speeding out towards St Albans on the road going north, where it seems that the Duke of York, far from riding peaceably to his ordeal, and waiting patiently to be arraigned as a traitor, instead mustered an army and came to plead with the king that his enemies be set aside and that the king be a good lord for all England and not just for Lancaster.