‘We have to go,’ I say suddenly.

She does not move, staring into the greyness of the twilight. ‘I think we’re winning,’ she says. ‘I think that was another charge and we broke through their line.’

‘We’re not winning, and we didn’t break through, we are running away and they are chasing us,’ I say harshly. ‘Margaret, come on.’

She turns to me, surprised by my use of her name, and I grab her by the hand and pull her towards the stone stairs. ‘What d’you think they’ll do with you if they catch you?’ I demand. ‘They’ll hold you in the Tower forever. Or worse, they’ll break your neck and say you fell from your horse. Come on!’

Suddenly she realises her danger, and she races down the stone steps of the tower, her feet pattering on the stone treads. ‘I’ll go alone,’ she says tersely. ‘I’ll go back to Eccleshall. You must stop them coming after me.’

She is ahead of me as we run to the forge where the blacksmith is just about to put the shoes on her horse.

‘Put them on backwards,’ she snaps.

‘Eh?’ he says.

She gives him a silver coin from her pocket. ‘Backwards,’ she says. ‘Put them on backwards. Hurry. A couple of nails to each shoe.’ To me she says, ‘If they want to follow me they will have no tracks. They will see only the horses coming here, they won’t realise I was going away.’

I realise I am staring at her, the queen of my vision, who had her horseshoes on backwards. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m going,’ she says. ‘Back to Eccleshall to fetch the prince and the king and to raise the main army to chase the Earl of Salisbury all the way to Ludlow if we have to.’

‘And what am I to do?’

She looks at the blacksmith. ‘Hurry. Hurry.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘Will you stay here? And if they come through, you are to tell them that I was going to meet my army at Nottingham.’

‘You’re leaving me here?’

‘They won’t hurt you, Jacquetta. They like you. Everyone likes you.’

‘They are an army hot from the battlefield, they have probably just killed my son-in-law, my husband and my son.’

‘Yes, but they won’t hurt you. They won’t make war on women. But I have to get away, and get the prince and the king safe. You will save me if you tell them I have gone to Nottingham.’

I hesitate for a moment. ‘I am afraid.’

She holds out her hand to me and she makes the gesture that I taught her myself. The pointing-finger gesture that draws the circle in the air, which shows the wheel of fortune. ‘I am afraid too,’ she says.

‘Go on then.’ I release her.

The smith hammers in the t nail, the horse walks a little awkwardly but he is sound enough. The smith drops to his hands and knees in the dirt and Margaret steps on his back to get into the saddle. She raises her hand to me. ‘À tout à l’ heure,’ she says as if she is just going out for a little ride for pleasure, and then she digs her heels in her horse’s sides and she goes flying off. I look down at the ground; the marks in the soft earth clearly show a horse coming into the forge, but there is no sign of one leaving.