‘You said trot!’

‘You’re doing so well,’ he says with a grin. I urge Merry on and she goes into her quick-paced canter. I am a little afraid without the stirrups to use as balance but he is right, I can sit in the saddle and grip with my legs as we go cantering down the tow path until he gives the hand-signal to slow, then pull up.

‘Why do I have to learn this?’ I ask breathlessly as he dismounts again to restore my stirrups.

‘In case you lose your stirrups, or one breaks, or if we have to ride away some time, when we can get hold of horses but no saddles. It’s good to be prepared for anything. Tomorrow we will practise riding bareback. I shall make you into a horsewoman. Already you could be trusted on a long ride.’

He swings back into his own saddle and we turn the horses’ heads for home.

‘And why don’t the English lords make the rule of law run through the country?’ I ask, returning to our conversation. ‘In France there are two rules of law, two kings. But at least the lords are obedient to the king who rules in their part.’

‘In England, they each make their own little lordship,’ he says. ‘They use the troubled times as a screen to serve themselves, to gain their own land, to make war on the neighbours. When the young king does decide to take his power, he will find he has to challenge the very people who should be his friends and advisors. He will need my lord duke at his side then.’

‘Will we have to go to England and live there? Will I have to live in England?’ I ask anxiously.

‘It is home,’ he says simply. ‘And even at its worst, one acre of England is worth ten square miles of France.’

I look at him blankly. ‘All you Englishmen are the same,’ I tell him. ‘You all think that you are divinely blessed by God for no better reason than you had the longbow at Agincourt.’

He laughs. ‘We are,’ he says. ‘We think rightly. We are divinely blessed. And perhaps when we go to England there will be time for me to show you my home. And perhaps you will agree with me.’

I have a little thrill of pleasure, as if something wonderful were going to happen to me. ‘Where is your home?’ I ask.

‘Grafton, Northamptonshire,’ he says, and I can hear the love in his voice. ‘Probably the most beautiful countryside, in what is the best country in all the world.’

* * *

We have one more attempt at scrying at the mirror before it is packed up to travel with us as we start on our journey to England. My lord is anxious for me to predict if it is safe for him to leave France. The Armagnac pretender has no money and no army and is badly advised by his court of favourites, but still my lord John is afraid that if he goes to England there will be no-one who can hold France against this man who claims he is king. I completely fail in my wifely duty to advise him, I see nothing. They sit me on a chair and I stare into the bright reflected candlelight until I am dizzy and – far from fainting – am in danger of falling asleep. For two hours my lord stands behind me and shakes my shoulder when he sees my head nod, until the alchemist says quietly, ‘I don’t think it is coming to her today, my lord,’ and the duke turns and stalks out of the room without a word to me.