He shakes his head. ‘She has a huge grant from parliament to raise archers and buy cannon, to use against the French; but there is nothing issued to me. And how can I fortify the towns with no men to serve and no cannon to fire?’

‘How can you?’ I ask.

‘I shall have to train the townsmen,’ he says. ‘And these are all towns on the coast, so at least I have ships’ captains and sailors if I can persuade them to enlist. I shall have to get them trained up into some kind of defence.’

‘So what is she doing with the money?’ I ask.

Now I have his full attention, he looks up at me, his face grave. ‘She is not protecting us against France, she is arming her men in London,’ he says. ‘I think she plans to charge the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury and the Duke of York with treason, and bring them to London to stand trial.’

I gasp. ‘They will never come?’

‘She is certainly preparing for them to come. If they come at all, they will bring their own forces and their own retinue and she will need her thirteen hundred archers,’ my husband says grimly. ‘I think she is preparing for war with them.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

WINTER–SPRING 1458

We are summoned, along with the rest of the lords, in the cold days after Christmas, to a London more dark and suspicious than ever before, to find that far from accusation and punishment, the king has overruled the queen and plans a reconciliation. He has risen up, fired by a vision. He is suddenly well again and strong and burning with an idea to resolve the conflict between the two great houses by demanding that the York lords shall pay for their cruelties at St Albans by being fined, building a chantry for the honoured dead, and then swearing to end the blood feud with the heirs of their enemies. The queen is calling for the Earl of Warwick to be impeached for treason; but the king wants him forgiven as a repentant sinner. The whole of London is like a keg of dynamite with a dozen boys striking sparks around it, and the king quietly saying the Pater Noster, uplifted by his new idea. The vengeful heirs of Somerset and Northumberland go everywhere with their sws at the ready and the promise of a feud which will last for ten generations; the York lords are impenitent – the Earl of Warwick’s men richly turned out in their liveries, Warwick a by-word for generosity and gifts to Londoners, boasting that already they hold Calais and the narrow seas and who dare gainsay them? And the Lord Mayor has armed every good man in London and commanded him to patrol to keep the peace, which just introduces another army for everyone to fear.

The queen summons me in the twilight of a winter afternoon. ‘I want you to come out with me,’ she says. ‘There is a man I want you to meet.’