I am quite at a loss in all the bustle. I have put my books that the Demoiselle left to me for safe-keeping with my husband’s library, and they will be guarded by the scholars while we are away. I have put her beautiful cards with my jewels for safety. Her gold bracelet with the charms I carry in a purse slung around my neck. I don’t want anyone else touching them. I have dressed for the journey and eaten my breakfast, served in my rooms, by maids in a hurry. I wait about, I don’t know what to do to be helpful, and I am too important for anyone to give me a task. The head of my ladies in waiting commands everything in my rooms so I just have to wait for everything to be ready for us to leave, and in the meantime there is nothing for me to do but watch the servants and the ladies running from one task to another.

By midday we are ready to leave, though the grooms of the hall, the stable and the armoury are all still packing things up. My lord takes my hand and leads me down the stairs and through the great hall where the servants are lined up to bow and wish us God speed on our journey. Then we go out into the stable yard, where I blink at the cavalcade preparing to depart. It is like a small town on the move. There is the armed guard: we are travelling with hundreds of soldiers, some in armour but most in livery, and they are waiting beside their horses, taking a last drink of ale, flirting with the maids. There are nearly fifty wooden wagons waiting in order, the ones carrying the valuables at the head of the line, with a guard at the front and back, the boxes chained to the sides of the wagon, sealed with the great Bedford seal. The grooms of the household will ride with these and each has responsibility for his own load. We are taking all our clothes, jewels, and personal goods. We are taking all our household linen, cutlery, glassware,nives, spoons, salt-cellars, spice pots. The household furniture is being shipped too, my lord’s groom of the bedchamber has ordered the careful dismantling of my lord’s great bed with its covers, curtains and tester, and the grooms of my chambers are bringing my bed, my tables, my beautiful Turkey carpets, and there are two whole wagons just for shipping the household tapestries.

The kitchen servants have loaded their essentials onto a line of wagons; we are bringing food as well as hens, ducks, geese, sheep and a couple of cows that will walk behind the wagons to give us fresh milk every day. The hawks from the mews are loaded on their own specially made carriage, where they can perch, blinded by their hoods; and the leather curtains are already tied down to shelter them, so they are not frightened by the noise of the road. My lord’s deerhounds will run alongside the procession, his foxhounds whipped in at the rear. The master of horse has all the work-horses harnessed to the wagons, and all the spare riding horses are bridled and in the care of a groom who rides one horse and leads one on either side. And this is only half the procession. The wagons, carrying the essential goods to make us comfortable tonight when we stop at Senlis, have already gone; they left at dawn. And amid all this noise and chaos Richard Woodville comes smiling up the stairs, bows to my lord and to me and says, as if hell were not boiling over in the yard, ‘I think we are ready, my lord, and what they have forgotten, they can always send on.’