I start again, addressing the Lord Mayor but speaking clearly enough so that they can hear me beyond the stone arch of the gate, in the streets beyond. I say that the women of the City know the queen should be admitted to raise the prince in her own palace; a woman has a right to her own home. That the king should be master in his own house.

Someone laughs at the mention of the king, and shouts a bawdy joke that he has never been master in his own house and probably not master in his own bed. I see that the months of York’s rule have left them certain that the king has no powers, that he is unfit to rule as the York lords said.

‘I would send the queen’s army the food they need,’ the Lord Mayor says to me in an undertone. ‘Please assure Her Grace of that. I had the wagons ready to leave but the citizens stopped me. They’re very afraid of the Scots in her army. What we hear is terrifying. In short, they won’t let them in, and they won’t allow me to send supplies.’

‘People are leaving the City,’ an alderman steps forwards to tell me. ‘Closing up their houses and going to France, and she’s only at St Albans. Nobody will stay in London if she comes any closer. The Duchess of York has sent her boys George and Richard to Flanders for their safe-keeping, and this is the duchess who surrendered to her once before! Now she swears that she won’t again. Nobody trusts her, everyone fears her army.’

‘There is nothing to fear,’ I insist. ‘Let me make you an offer: how would this be? How would it be if the queen agrees to leave the army outside? Then you could let the royal family in, and their household with them. The king and queen have to be safe in the Tower of London. You cannot deny them that.’

He turns to the senior aldermen and they mutter together. ‘I am asking this in the name of the King of England,’ I say. ‘You all swore to be loyal to him. Now he asks that you admit him into your city.’

‘If the king will guarantee our safety’ – the Lord Mayor turns to me – ‘we will admit the king and the royal family and their household. But not the Scots. And the king and the queen have to promise that the Scots will be kept outside the walls, and that the City will not be sacked. Four of us will come with you, to tell the queen this.’

Anthony, who has been standing behind me, rigid as any commander, silent while I do my work, cups his hands for my foot and helps me into the saddle. He holds my horse as the Lord Mayor comes close for a quiet word. I lean down to hear him.

‘Has the poor king stopped weeping?’ he asks. ‘When he was living here under the command of the Duke of York, he wept all the time. He went to Westminster Abbey and measured out the space for his own tomb. They say he never smiled but cried all the time like a sorrowful child.’