She makes a little grimace. ‘My place is here,’ she says. ‘And Lady Grey would not like me to be away. I am just so fearful for John.’

I put my hand on her restless fingers. ‘You have to be calm. I know it is difficult, but you have to be calm and hope for the best. Your father has been out to battle a dozen times and each time it is as bad as the first – but each time he has come home to me.’

She catches my hand. ‘What do you see?’ she asks me very quietly. ‘What do you see for John? It is him I fear for, much more even than Anthony or Father.’

I shake my head. ‘I can’t foretell,’ I say. ‘I feel as if I am waiting for a sign, as if we all are. Who would have thought that we brought Margaret of Anjou, that pretty girl, to England for this?’

ON THE MARCH,

SPRING 1461

We ride as a small troop, my son-in-law John, Richard, Anthony and me at the head of our tenants and household men. We can go no faster than their marching pace and the road is flooded in some parts and as we get further and further north it starts to snow. I think of the signs that my lord John Duke of Bedford asked me to see; I remember a vision of a battle in snow, that ended in blood, and I wonder if we are riding towards it.

Finally, on the third day, the scout that Richard has sent ahead comes cantering back and says that all the country people have bolted their doors and shutters because they believe that the queen’s army is a day’s march away. Richard calls a halt and we go to a manor farm to ask for a bed for the night and a barn where our men can sleep. The place is deserted, they have locked the door and abandoned the house. They would rather take to the hills than welcome the true Queen of England. We break in, and forage for food, light the fire, and order the men to stay in the barn and the yard and to steal nothing. But everything valuable has been taken away and hidden already. Whoever lived here feared the queen as a thief in the night. They left nothing for the queen and her army, they would certainly never fight for her. She has become an enemy to her own people.

At dawn the next day, we understand why. There is a great hammering on the front door and as I get out of bed there is a wild face glowering at the window, and in a moment the little pane of glass is smashed and a man is in the room, another coming through the window behind him, a knife in his teeth. I scream ‘Richard!’ and snatch up my knife and face them. ‘I am the Duchess of Bedford, friend to the queen,’ I shout.