‘Anthony is with you?’

‘Of course. Safe and sound.’

I twist in his arms to see my son, smiling at me from the doorway. Richard releases me and I run to Anthony as he kneels for my blessing. To feel his warm head under my hand is to know that the greatest joy of my life is restored to me. I turn back to my husband and wrap my arms around Richard once more.

‘Have you news?’

‘The York lords win all,’ Richard says shortly. ‘London greeted them like heroes, Lord Scales tried to get away from the Tower and was killed, and the Duke of York is making his way to London. I think they’ll appoint him Protector. The king is safe in the Palace of Westminster, completely under the rule of Warwick. They say his wits are gone again. What of the queen?’

I glance around; even on the terrace of my own manor house I am afraid that someone will hear where she is, and betray her. ‘Gone to Jasper Tudor,’ I whisper. ‘And from there to France or Scotland, I should think.’

Richard nods. ‘Come in,’ he says gently to me. ‘You must be weary. You weren’t near the battle, were you? You had no danger on the roads?’

I lean against him and feel the familiar sense of relief that he is by my side. ‘I feel safe now, at any rate,’ I say.

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

WINTER 1460–61

We live as we did when we were first married, as if we had no work to do but to keep the lands around Grafton, as if we were nothing but a squire and his wife. We don’t want the attention of the York lords as they make the country their own, impose massive fines on the lords they now call traitors, take posts and fees from the men they have defeated. There is a greed here, and a thirst for revenge, and all I want is for it to pass us by. We live quietly and hope to escape notice. We hear, in snatches of gossip from travellers who ask for a bed for the night, and occasional visitors, that the king is living quietly at Westminster Palace in the queen’s rooms while his conquering cousin, Richard, Duke of York, has taken up residence in the king’s own apartments. I think of my king in the rooms that I knew so well and I pray that he does not slide into sleep again to escape a waking world which is so hard on him.

The duke forges an extraordinary agreement with the Privy Council and the parliament: he will be regent and Protector of the Realm until the death of the king and then he will become king himself. A peddler, who comes by with York ribbons of white and white roses of silk in his pack, says that the king has agreed to this and is going to take vows and become a monk.

‘He’s not in the Tower?’ I ask urgently. I have a horror of the king being sent to the Tower.