Behind me and to the side of me is a dazzle of candles so bright that they drain the colour from the gown, even from the blue shoes, even from the shelves and the books behind me that, as I look, grow darker and more misty.

‘Look deep into the mirror and say what you can see,’ the man urges again, his voice low. ‘Tell us what you can see, Lady Bedford. What can you see?’

The light is overwhelming, it is too bright to see anything, I cannot even see my own face, dazzled by the hundreds of candles. And then I see her, as clearly as the day when we lazed by the moat, as brightly as when she was alive and laughing, before the moment when she drew the card of le Pendu in his suit as blue as my shoes.

‘Joan,’ I say quietly with deep sorrrow. ‘Oh, Joan. The Maid.’

I struggle to come back to wakefulness through the noise of the alchemist flapping at the candles to put them out. Some must have fallen over when I went down in a faint. Woodville the squire has me in his arms, holding up my head, and my husband is sprinkling cold water in my face.

‘What did you see?’ my lord demands as soon as my eyelids flutter open.

‘I don’t know.’ For some reason, a sudden pang of fear warns me. I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to say Joan’s name to the man who had her burned alive.

‘What did he say?’ He glares at the squire and at the alchemist. ‘As she went down? She said something. I heard something. What did she say?’

‘Did she say “the Maid”?’ the alchemist asks. ‘I think she did.’

They both look at Woodville.

‘She said “it’s made”,’ he lies easily.

‘What could she mean?’ The duke looks at me. ‘What did you mean? What d’you mean, Jacquetta?’

‘Would it be Your Grace’s university at Caen?’ Woodville asks. ‘I think she said “Caen”, and then she said “it’s made”.’

‘I saw Your Grace’s planned university at Caen,’ I say, taking up the prompt. ‘Completed. Beautiful. That’s what I said: “it’s made”.’

He smiles, he is pleased. ‘Well, that’s a good vision,’ he says, encouraged. ‘That’s a good glimpse of a safe and happy future. That’s good news. And best of all, we see she can do it.’

He puts out his arm and helps me to my feet. ‘So,’ he says with a triumphant smile to the alchemist, ‘I will bring her back tomorrow, after Mass, after she has broken her fast. Get a chair for her to sit on next time, and make the room ready for her. We will see what she can tell us. But she can do it, can’t she?’

‘Without a doubt,’ agrees the alchemist. ‘And I will have everything ready.’

He bows and goes back into the inner room, and Woodville picks up the rest of the candles and blows them out, and my lord straightens the mirror. I lean for a moment against an archway between one set of shelves and another, and my husband glances up and sees me.