‘I cannot advise my friend to come to you unless you, yourself, guarantee his safety,’ Richard says tightly. ‘Do you promise him your pardon for serving against you, Your Grace? Can I trust to your word of pardon?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ the queen exclaims. ‘Who will join us?’

‘Andrew Trollope, and the six hundred trained and loyal men under his command,’ Richard announces, and steps aside to allow the slim hard-faced man into the royal presence. ‘And that,’ Richard says to me, as he comes to stand beside me, ‘has just decided the battle.’

* * *

Richard is right. As soon as they know that Trollope has turned his coat and come over to us with his men, the three York lords disappear, like mist in the morning. They slip away, overnight, abandoning their men, abandoning their town, even abandoning Cecily Neville the Duchess of York, the wife of Richard the duke. When our army pours into the town of Ludlow, and starts to strip away everything they can carry, she is standing there, with the keys of the castle in her hand, waiting for the queen. She, who has always been a proud woman, married to a royal lord, is most terribly afraid, I can see it on her white face; and I, who had to wait in Mucklestone for their victorious army to sweep by, take no pleasure in seeing such a proud woman brought down so low.

‘You have the keys of the castle for me,’ the queen sings out, looking down on the duchess from high on her great horse.

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ Cecily says steadily. ‘And I plead for my own safety, and for the safety of these my children.’

‘Of course,’ the king says at once. ‘Sir Richard – take the keys and escort the duchess to a safe place, her children with her. She is under my protection.’

‘Hold a minute,’ Margaret says. ‘What children are these?’

‘This is my daughter Margaret,’ Duchess Cecily says. A tall girl of thirteen blushes painfully red and curtseys low to the queen, recovers from her mistake and curtseys again to the king. ‘This is my son George, and my youngest boy Richard.’

I would judge George to be about eleven years of age and Richard about seven. They both look stunned with shock, as well they might; for they are boys who yesterday thought their father was heir to the throne of England, likely to fight his way through to the throne, and today find themselves facing the king’s army and their father run away. A crash from a house behind us and a piercing scream from a woman, begging for help as she is pulled down and raped, reminds ul that we are in the middle of a war, talking in a battlefield.

‘Take them away,’ the king says quickly.

‘And your husband has left you here?’ the queen torments the defeated duchess. ‘Do you remember how you insisted that you be admitted to my chamber when I had just given birth to my baby, and you told me that your husband must visit my husband when he was ill, in the time of our travail? He forced his way into the Privy Council once, but now we see he just ups and goes. He is present where he is not wanted; but when he is needed, he just abandons you. He declares war and then disappears from the battlefield!’