The duchess sways on her feet, her face as white as skimmed milk. Smoke drifts across the market square, someone somewhere has fired a thatch. The woman who screamed for help is sobbing in rhythmic pain. I see the little boy Richard look around at the sound of someone smashing an axe into a locked door and the babble of an old voice praying to be spared, calling for mercy to someone who is not listening.

‘Your Grace,’ I say to the queen. ‘This is no place for any of us. Let us leave the lords to regain control of the men and get out of this town.’

To my surprise she smiles at me, a gleam of malice that shows clearly before she drops her eyes to her horse’s mane and hides her expression. ‘It’s a very blunt weapon: an army of uncontrolled men,’ she says. ‘When York raised an army against me, he cannot have imagined that I would bring my army against him and that it would be like this. He has taught me a lesson that I have learned well. An army of poor men is a terror indeed. He nearly frightened me. He must be sorry now, now that there is an army of poor men tearing apart his home town.’

The little dark-haired boy Richard flushes in temper, looks up, opens his mouth as if to shout his defiance. ‘Let’s go,’ I say swiftly, and my husband calls a couple of horses forwards, lifts the duchess into the saddle without ceremony, settles her children in the saddle before three cavalrymen, and we leave the town. As we clatter over the bridge I can hear another woman scream and the noise of running feet. Ludlow is paying the price for the flight of their lord, the Duke of York.

* * *

‘Yes, but not his death,’ my son Anthony observes. The three of us are riding home to Grafton together, our men straggling down the road behind us. I observe, but try to make it clear that I have not seen, that they are weighed down with loot; every one of them has some cloth bound tight in his pack, or a piece of plate, or a cup of pewter. They were our tenants but we put them in the queen’s army and they fought by her rules. They were told that they might loot Ludlow to punish the treasonous York lords and we will never muster them to ride out for us again if we spoil their sport and demand that they hand back the goods they have thieved. ‘While York lives, while Warwick lives, while Salisbury lives, the wars are not over; they are only put off for a little while longer.’

Richard nods. ‘Warwick is back in Calais, Richard Duke of York back in Ireland. The kingdom’s greatest enemies have returned to refuge, safe in their castles overseas. We will have to prepare for an invasion again.’

‘The queen is confident,’ I say.