‘You don’t matter,’ I observe.

* * *

I ride my horse every morning, with an armed escort of ten men ahead of me and ten behind, and Woodville at my side. We go through the streets of Paris, looking away from the beggars starving in the gutters, and we ignore the people who stretch out imploring hands. There is terrible poverty in the city and the countryside is all but waste, the farmers cannot get their produce to market, and the crops are constantly trampled by one or other of the armies. The men run away from their villages and hide in the forests for fear of being recruited or hanged as traitors, so there is no-one but women to work the fields. The price of bread in the city is more than a man can earn, and besides, there is no work but soldiering and the English are late with their wages again. Woodville gives orders that we must ride at a hand-gallop through the streets, not just for fear of beggars but also for fear of disease. My predecessor, the Duchess Anne, died of a fever after visiting the hospital. Now my lord swears that I shall not so much as speak to a poor person, and Woodville rushes me through the streets and I don’t draw breath until we are out of the city gates and going through what once were busy gardens, the fertile tilled land that lies between the city walls and the river. Only then does Woodville order the armed men to halt and dismount, and wait for us, while the two of us ride down to the river and take the tow path and listen to the water as if we were a couple riding in a countryside at peace.

We go companionably, side by side, and talk of nothing of any importance. He helps me with my riding, I have never ridden so fine a horse as Merry, and he shows me how to straighten up in the saddle, and gather her up so she curves her neck and stretches out her stride. He shows me how he rides a cavalry charge, bent low over the horse’s neck, going ahead of me down the track and thundering back towards us, pulling up at the last moment so Merry sidles and dances on the spot. He teaches me how to jump, getting off his horse to drag little branches of wood across the deserted track, building them higher and higher as my confidence increases. He teaches me the exercises his father taught him in the lanes of England, riding exercises to improve balance and courage: sitting sideways like a girl riding pillion, lying backwards across the horse, with the saddle in the small of my back, while the horse jogs along, sitting up tall and stretching one arm then another up to the sky, crouching down low to touch my stirrups, anything which accustoms the horse to the idea that it must go on steadily and safely, whatever the rider does, whatever happens around it.