My mother smiles faintly. ‘It makes you a duchess,’ she reminds me. ‘A greater title even than mine.’

‘I could be a duchess next year.’ The thought of escaping this marriage, even for a year, fills me with hope. ‘We could just be betrothed.’

‘Lord John won’t wait,’ she says flatly. ‘So don’t hope for that. I just want to warn you that he may lose his ally by marrying you. You must do all that you can to retain the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy, aremind them both that you are a kinswoman of Burgundy and his vassal. Speak to the Duke of Burgundy privately and promise him that you remember your kinship to the Burgundians. Do all you can to keep the friendship between the two of them, Jacquetta.’

I nod. I really don’t know what she thinks I can do, a seventeen-year-old girl, to maintain an alliance of two great men old enough to be my father. But I will have to promise to do my best.

‘And the marriage . . .’ I begin.

‘Yes?’

I take a breath. ‘What exactly happens?’

She shrugs, she makes a little face as if talk of it is beneath her, or embarrassing, or even worse – too disagreeable for words. ‘Oh, my dear, you just do your duty. He will tell you what he expects. He will tell you what to do. He won’t expect you to know anything, he will prefer to be your instructor.’

‘Does it hurt?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she says unhelpfully. ‘But not for very long. Since he is older and practised, he should do his best to see that you are not hurt too badly.’ She hesitates. ‘But if he does hurt you . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t complain of it.’

* * *

The wedding is to be at midday and I start preparing at eight in the morning when my maid brings me bread and meat and small ale to sustain me through the long day. I giggle when I see the tray heaped with food. ‘I’m not going out hunting, you know.’

‘No,’ she says ominously. ‘You are to be hunted,’ and the other maids with her all cackle like a pen of hens and that is the last joke I am going to offer all day.

I sit at the table in a sulk, and eat, while they embroider versions of the theme of me being hunted and caught and enjoying the chase, until my mother comes in, and behind her come two serving men, rolling the great wooden barrel of a bath.

They place it before the fire in my bedroom, line it with linen and start to pour in jug after jug of hot water. The maids bustle about bringing drying sheets, and start to lay out my new undergowns, with much comment about the lace and the ribbons and how fine everything is, and how lucky I am. My mother sees my strained expression and shoos them all from the room except our old nursemaid who is to scrub my back and wash my hair and add jugs of hot water. I feel like a sacrificial lamb being cleaned and brushed before having its throat cut; and it is not a pleasant thought.