* * *

By the time we get to her rooms the privy chamber door is closed and her women are outside in her presence chamber, gossiping furiously. They rush towards us as we come in, but I brush them aside and tap on the door and she calls me and Richard in together. The young Duke of Somerset is there already, whispering to her.

She glances at my shocked face and hurries to me. ‘Jacquetta, were you there? Not hurt?’

‘Your Grace, the Earl of Warwick was attacked in the council chamber itself,’ I say bluntly. ‘By men in the livery of Buckingham and Somerset.’

‘But not by me,’ the twenty-two-year-old duke says, as pert as a child.

‘Your men,’ my husband observes, his tone level. ‘And it is illegal to draw a sword in the royal court.’ He turns to the queen. ‘Your Grace, everyone will think this is ordered by you, and it is most treacherous. It was in the council chamber, in the demesne of the court. You are supposed to be reconciled. You gave your royal word. It is dishonourable. Warwick will complain and he will be right to do so.’

She flushes at that and glances at the duke, who shrugs his shoulders. ‘Warwick doesn’t deserve an honourable death,’ he says pettishly. ‘He did not give my father an honourable death.’

‘Your father died in battle,’ Richard points out. ‘A fair fight. And Warwick has begged and been given your forgiveness, and paid for a chantry in your father’s name. That grievance is over and you have been paid for the loss of your father. This was an attack inside the safety of the court. How will the council do its business if a man risks his life attending? How will any of the York lords dare to come again? How can men of goodwill come to a council which attacks its own members? How can a man of honour serve such a rule?’

‘He got away?’ the queen ignores Richard to ask me, as if this is all that matters.

‘He got away,’ I say.

‘I should think he will get away all the way to Calais and you will have a powerful enemy in a fortified castle off your shores,’ Richard says bitterly. ‘And I can tell you that not one town in a hundred can be defended against attack on the south coast. He could sail up the Thames and bombard the Tower, and now he will think himself fre do so. You have broken his alliance for nothing and put us all in danger.’

‘He was our enemy at any time,’ young Somerset remarks. ‘He was our enemy before this.’

‘He was bound by a truce,’ Richard insists. ‘And by his oath of allegiance to the king. He honoured it. Attacking him in the council chamber releases him from both.’

‘We shall leave London,’ the queen rules.

‘That’s not the solution!’ Richard explodes. ‘You can’t make an enemy like this and think that all you need do is flee. Where will be safe? Tutbury? Kenilworth? Coventry? Do you think to abandon the southern counties of England altogether? Shall Warwick just march in? Is it your plan to give him Sandwich, as you have given him Calais? Shall you give him London?’