‘Just you and me?&squo; I ask sceptically.

‘Why not?’

‘No hawks?’

‘Oh, come on!’ she says, as impatient as a girl. ‘Don’t you want to watch over Richard? And your son Anthony?’

‘We’ll never be able to see them,’ I say.

‘We’ll climb a tree,’ she replies, and then steps up on the mounting block, swings her leg over her horse and nods to the groom to pull down her gown over her boots. ‘Are you coming? For I will go without you if I have to.’

‘I’m coming,’ I say, and I mount and ride beside her as we go towards Blore Heath.

We are greeted with a messenger from James Touchet who suggests that we might like to go to the church at nearby Mucklestone, where we will be able to see the battlefield from the belfry. The noble lord is arranging a viewing tower as if for a day’s jousting. We clatter into the little village, sending chickens fluttering away from our horses’ hooves, and leave the horses at the village forge.

‘You can shoe my horse while he is waiting here,’ the queen says to the blacksmith, throwing him a penny, then she turns and leads the way to the church.

Inside it is quiet and dim, and we take the winding stone stair upwards and upwards to where the bell is hung in the tower. It is like a great watchtower, the bell behind us, a stone parapet before us, and clearly across the fields we can see the road from the north, and in the distance the trail of dust that is the marching army of the Earl of Salisbury.

The queen touches my arm, her face alight with excitement, and points ahead. We can see a great hedge and behind it the standards of our army. I put my hand over my eyes and scowl, trying to identify the Rivers flag in case I can make out Anthony or my husband nearby, but it is too far to see. Our forces are perfectly positioned, Salisbury will not know they are there, nor in what numbers, until he comes out of the little wood either side of his road, and then they will face him. There is something very dreadful about looking down on the battlefield, as if we were stone gargoyles on the tower, watching the deaths of mortals for sport. I look at the queen. She does not feel this, she is alight with excitement, her hands clasped tight together as the outriders at the front of the York army come briskly out from the wood, and fall back when they see the mighty force before them arranged in battle order on the little hill with a small river between them.

‘What are they doing?’ the queen demands irritably, as we see a herald ride out from each side and meet in the middle ground between the two armies.

‘Parleying?’ I ask.

‘There is nothing to talk about,’ she says. ‘He is named a traitor. Lord Audley’s instructions are to take him, or kill him, not to talk to him.’