The alchemist helps me from the chair and Woodville blows out the candles and opens the shutters to let the smell of smoke out of the room. The small sickle of a new moon looks in on me and I dip a curtsey and turn over the coins in my little pocket and make a wish. The alchemist exchanges a look with Woodville as if they have spent all the evening with a peasant girl who curtseys to a new moon and wishes for a lover, but has no learning and has no vision and is a waste of everyone’s time.

‘Never mind,’ Woodville says cheerfully, offering me his arm. ‘We leave for England in the morning and they won’t ask you to do this for another month.’

‘Are they bringing the mirror with us?’ I ask apprehensively.

‘The mirror and some of the books; but the vessels and the oven and the forge stay here of course, they will continue with their work while we are away.’

‘And do they discover anything?’

He nods. ‘Oh yes, my lord has refined silver and gold to a purer level than any man has ever done before. He is working on new metals, new combinations for greater strength or greater suppleness. And of course, if he could mke the stone itself . . .’

‘The stone?’

‘They call it the philosopher’s stone, that turns metal to gold, water to the elixir vitae, that gives the owner eternal life.’

‘Is there such a thing?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘There have been many reports of it, it is well-known in the old manuscripts that he has had translated here. Throughout Christendom and in the East there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of men working on it right now. But my lord duke is in the vanguard. If he could find it, if you could help him to find it, we could bring peace to France and to England.’

* * *

The noise of the castle packing up and readying for a great journey wakes me at dawn and I go to the chapel to hear Matins as the sun is rising. The priest finishes the service and starts to pack up the sacred pictures and the crucifix and the monstrance. We are taking almost everything with us.

In my own rooms my ladies in waiting are folding my gowns into great travelling chests and calling the pages to cord them up, and the grooms of the household to seal them. The jewel boxes they will carry themselves, my furs will be guarded by the grooms of the household. Nobody knows how long we will stay in England. Woodville becomes very cautious when I ask him. Clearly, my husband is not being adequately supported by his nephew the king, nor financed as he should be by the English parliament that has to raise taxes for the war in France. The purpose of the trip is to make them see that English coins buy French support; and they must pay. But nobody knows how long it will take to make the English understand that they cannot have an army for free.