‘Now I dismiss the men who stole the goods, dismiss their commander, and appoint a new Captain of Calais,’ my husband says shortly. He looks across me at the squire. ‘You.’

‘I, my lord?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m honoured, but . . .’

‘Are you arguing with me?’

‘No, my lord, of course not.’

My husband smiles at the silenced young man. ‘That’s good.’ To me he says, ‘This young man, my squire, my friend, Richard Woodville, has fought in almost every campaign here in France and was knighted on the battlefield by the late king, my brother. His father served us too. He’s not yet thirty years old but I know of no-one more loyal or trustworthy. He can command this garrison and while he is here I can be sure that there will be no mutinies, and no complaints, and no petty thieving. And there will be no arguing about my orders. Is that right, Woodville?’

‘Quite right, sir,’ he says.

And then the three of us go through the dark echoing doorway and up the cobbled streets, past the hanged mutineers swinging silently on the gallows, through the bowing citizens to the castle of Calais.

‘Am I to stay here now?’ Woodville asks, as if it is a mere matter of a bed for the night.

‘Not yet,’ my husband says. ‘I have need of you by me.’

We stay only three nights, long enough for my husband to dismiss half of the soldiers of the garrison and send to England for their replacements, long enough to warn their commander that he will be replaced by the squire Sir Richard Woodville, and ten we rattle down the cobbled street and out of the gateway and go south down the road to Paris, the squire Woodville at the head of the troop once more, me on the lumbering horse of the man at arms, and my husband in grim silence.

It is a two-day ride before we see the Grange Batelière standing over the desolate countryside outside the city. Beyond it are worked fields and little dairy farms which gradually give way to small market gardens that surround the city walls. We enter through the north-west gate, close to the Louvre, and see at once my Paris home, the Hôtel de Bourbon, one of the greatest houses in the city, as befits the ruler of France. It stands beside the king’s palace of the Louvre, looking south over the river, like a building in marchpane, all turrets and roofs and towers and balconies. I should have known that it would be a great house, having seen my lord’s castle at Rouen; but when we ride up to the great gates I feel like a princess in a story being taken into a giant’s fortress. A fortified wall runs all around, and there is a guard house at every gate, which reminds me, if I were in any danger of forgetting, that my husband may be the ruler but not everyone recognises him as the representative of the God-given king. The one that many prefer to call the King of France is not far away, at Chinon, eyeing our lands and stirring up trouble. The one that we call the King of France and England is safe in London, too poor to send my husband the money and troops he needs to keep these faithless lands in subjection, too weak to command his lords to come to fight under our standard.