I leave St Albans at dawn and ride through the fields. I sleep one night in an abbey and one in an inn. It is a weary journey but the grey skies and the muddy lanes match my mood. I am part of a victorious army on a winning campaign but I have never before felt so defeated. I think of the two lords on their knees before Margaret and the enmity in her face. I think of her son, our little prince, and his boyish treble when he ordered two good men to be killed. I ride blindly, hardly seeing the way. I know myself to be losing my faith.

It takes me two days to get to the little village of Groby and as I ride in through the great gates of the Hall, I wish I was not there. Elizabeth herself opens the door, and as soon as she sees me, she knows why I have come.

‘Is he wounded?’ she asks; but I see that she knows he is dead. ‘Have you come to fetch me?’

‘No, I am sorry, Elizabeth.’

‘Not wounded?

‘He is dead.’

I had thought she would collapse but she takes the blow and then straightens herself and stands very tall. ‘And have we lost again?’ she asks impatiently, as if it means nothing either way.

I get down from my horse and throw the reins at a groom. ‘Feed him and water him and rub him down,’ I say. ‘I have to leave the day after tomorrow.’ To Elizabeth I say, ‘No, dearest. We won. Your husband led the charge that broke Warwick’s line. He was very brave.’

She looks at me, her grey eyes blank with misery. ‘Brave? D’you think it was worth it? This victory in this little battle, another battle, another little victory in exchange for him?’

‘No,’ I say honestly. ‘For there will be another battle and your father and Anthony will have to fight in it again. It goes on and on.’

She nods. ‘Will you come and tell his mother?’

I step over the threshold into the warm shadows of Groby Hall and know that I will have to do the worst, the very worst thing that one woman can do to another: tell her that her son is dead.

* * *

When I get back to St Albans I find most of the town empty, the shops gutted and the houses barred. The townspeople are terrified of the queen’s army, which has looted all the valuables and foraged all the food for an area of ten miles all around the town. ‘Thank God you’re back,’ Richard says to me, helping me from my horse in the front yard of the abbey. ‘It is like trying to command the enemy. The monks have left the abbey, the townspeople have fled from the town. And the Lord Mayor of London has sent for you.’

‘For me?’

‘He wants you and the Duchess of Buckingham to meet him and agree whether the king and the queen can enter London.’