‘Can we come with you, Lady Grandmother?’ Her boys appear from nowhere, mud on their faces as usual. ‘Where are you going with that basket?’

‘You can’t come with me,’ I say. ‘I am looking for plover eggs. But I will take you tomorrow if I find a nest.’

‘Can’t we come now?’ asks Thomas, Elizabeth’s oldest boy.

I put my hand on his head, his warm silky curls remind me of Anthony when he was a loving little boy like this one. ‘No. You must find your mother and eat your supper and go to bed when she orders you. But I will take you with me tomorrow.’

I leave them and go across the gravel garden at the front of the house, through the wicket gate and down to the river. There is a little bridge across the river, a couple of small wooden planks where the children like to come to fish, and I go across, ducking my head under the upturned branches of the ash tree, and scramble down the little bank to the trunk of the tree.

I put my arms around the tree to tie the three strings around it, and my cheek lies against the rippled grey bark. For a moment I listen. Almost I can hear the heart of the tree beating. ‘What will become of Elizabeth?’ I whisper, and it is almost as if the leaves can whisper back to me. ‘What will become of my Elizabeth?’

I have never been able to foresee her future, even though of all my children she has always been the one that promised so much. I have always thought she might be especially blessed. I wait; the leaves rustle. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say to myself. ‘Perhaps the stream will tell us.’

Each charm is now tied to the tree by its own long dark string and when I throw them out into the water, as far as they can go, I hear three splashes like a salmon snapping a fly, and they are gone, and the threads are invisible.

I stand for a moment and look into the moving water. ‘Elizabeth,’ I say quietly to the stream. ‘Tell me what will become of Elizabeth, my daughter.’

* * *

At dinner that night my husband says that the king is recruiting soldiers for a new battle. He will be marching north. ‘You won’t have to go?’ I say in sudden alarm. ‘Nor Anthony?’

‘We’ll have to send men, but to be hone my dear, I don’t think they would especially want us in the line.’

Anthony gives a rueful chuckle. ‘Like Lovelace,’ he says, and his father laughs.

‘Like Trollope.’

‘I should ask King Edward to enquire into my dower,’ Elizabeth remarks. ‘For sure my boys will have nothing unless I can find someone who will make Lady Grey keep her promise to me.’

‘Kidnap him as he rides by,’ Anthony suggests. ‘Fall on your knees to him.’

‘My daughter will do no such thing,’ my husband rules. ‘And we can provide for you here, until you reach agreement with Lady Grey.’