‘I see what they are doing, they’re hoping you will lose your temper,’ I tell him. ‘They are hoping you will attack them and then they can cut you down. Remember what your father said. Stay calm.’

‘They insult you!’ Anthony is sweating with rage.

‘Look at me!’ I demand.

He darts a fierce glance at me and then hesitates. Despite my hasty words to him, my face is utterly calm, I am smiling. ‘I was not the woman left in Ludlow marketplace when my husband ran away,’ I say to him in a rapid whisper. ‘I was the daughter of the Count of Luxembourg when Cecily Neville was nothing more than a pretty girl in a northern castle. I am the descendant of the goddess Melusina. You are my son. We come from a line of nobles who trace their line back to a goddess. They can say what they like behind my back, they can say it to my face. I know who I am. I know what you were born to be. And it is more, far more, than they.’

Anthony hesitates. ‘Smile,’ I command him.

‘What?’

‘Smile at them.’

He raises his head, he can hardly twist his face into a smile but he does it.

‘You have no pride!’ Edward of March spits at him. ‘There is nothing here to smile at!’

Anthony inclines his head slightly, as if accepting a great compliment.

‘You let me speak like this of your own mother? Before her very face?’ Edward demands, his voice cracking with rage. ‘Do you have no pride?’

‘My mother does not need your good opinion,’ Anthony says icily. ‘None of us care what you think.’

‘Your own mother is well,’ I say to Edward gently. ‘She was very distressed at Ludlow, to be left on her own in such danger, but my husband, Lord Rivers, took her and your sister Margaret and your brothers George and Richard to safety. My husband, Lord Rivers, protected them when the army was running through the town. He made sure that no-one insulted them. The king is paying her a pension, and she is in no hardship. I saw her myself a little while ago and she told me she prays for you and for your father.’

It shocks him into silence. ‘You have my husband to thank for her safety,’ I repeat.

‘He is base-born,’ Edward says, as someone repeating a lesson by rote.

I shrug my shoulders as if it is nothing to me. Indeed, it is nothing to me. ‘We are in your keeping,’ I say simply. ‘Base or noble. And you have no cause to complain of us. Will you give us safe passage to England?’

‘Take them away,’ the Earl of Salisbury snaps.

‘I would like my usual rooms,’ Richard says. ‘I was captain of this castle for more than four years, and I kept it safe for England. I usually have the rooms that look over the harbour.’

The Earl of Warwick curses like a tavern owner.