I turn to the stable yard. The grooms are carrying away everything they can take, the looting of the royal goods is beginning. I shout for one of my men and tell him to pack up everything that is mine and guard it. We are leaving at once. We will go home to Grafton and all I can do is hope that Richard and Anthony come there.

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

SUMMER 1460

It is a weary ride to Grafton, a long journey of nearly a hundred miles, through countryside which is loyal to Warwick the invader. At every stop there is a panic-stricken exchange of news: what do we know? What have we seen? And always – is the queen bringing her army this way? I order my men to give out that I am a widow travelling privately on a pilgrimage, and we stay at an abbey for one night, and a church house the second, and on the third we bed down in a barn, always avoiding the inns. Even so, the gossip that is swirling around the country comes to me every evening. They say that the king has been taken to London and that Richard Duke of York has landed from Ireland, and is proceeding in royal state to the capital city. Some say that when he gets there he will become protector and regent once more, some say that he will rule the king from behind the throne, the king will be his little doll, his poppet. I say nothing. I wonder if the queen has got safely to Wales, and I wonder if I will ever see my husband or my son again.

It takes us four days to get home and as we turn up the familiar track to the house I feel my heart lift. At least I shall see my children and stay with them safely and quietly here while the great changes in the country take place without me. At least I can find a refuge here. As we ride up, I hear someone start tolling the bell in the stable yard, to warn the household of the arrival of an armed troop, ourselves, and the front door opens and the men at arms spill out of the house. At their head – I could not mistake him, I would know him anywhere – is my husband Richard.

He sees me in the same moment and comes bounding down the steps at the front of the house, so fast that my horse shies and I have to hold her still as he pulls me from the saddle and into his arms. He kisses my face and I cling to him. ‘You’re alive!’ I say. ‘You’re alive!’

‘They let us go as soon as they had made landfall themselves,’ he says. ‘Didn’t even take a ransom. They just released us from the castle at Calais and then I had to find a ship to bring us home. Took us into Greenwich.e a;