His servants come in, they make him comfortable in his bed, and then I kiss his forehead and leave him for the night. As it happens, that is the last time I see him, for he dies in his sleep that night, and so that was the last he saw of me: not a loving wife but a statue gilded by the setting sun.

They call me at about seven in the morning and I go to his room and see him, almost as I left him. He seems peacefully asleep, only the slow low tolling of the single bell in the tower of Rouen cathedral tells the household and the city that the great Lord John is dead. Then the women come to wash and lay out his body, and the master of the household starts to make the plans for his lying-in at the cathedral, the joiner orders wood and starts to make his coffin, and only Richard Woodville thinks to draw me aside, stunned and silent as I am, from all the bustle and work, and takes me back to my own rooms.

He orders breakfast for me, and hands me over to the ladies of my chamber, telling them to see that I eat, and then rest. The sempstress and the tailors will come at once to measure us up for our mourning clothes, the shoemaker will come to make black slippers for me. The glovemaker will produce dozens of pairs of black gloves for me to distribute to my household. They will order black cloth to swathe the way to the cathedral, and black capes for the one hundred poor men who will be hired to follow the coffin. My lord will be buried in Rouen cathedral and there will be a procession of lords and a great service to bid him farewell, and everything must be done exactly as he would have wished it, with dignity, in the English style.

I spend the day writing to everyone to announce the death of my husband. I write to my mother to tell her that I am a widow like her: my lord has died. I write to the King of England, to the Duke of Burgundy, to the Holy Roman Emperor, to the other kings, to Yolande of Aragon. The rest of the time I pray; I attend every service of the day in our private chapel, and in the meantime the monks at the Rouen cathedral will watch and pray all the hours of the day and night over my husband’s body, which is guarded with four knights at every point of the compass: a vigil which will only end with his funeral.

I wait in case God has some guidance for me, I wait on my knees in case I can come to some understanding that my husband has been called to his reward, that at last he has come to lands that he does not have to defend. But I hear and see nothing. Not even Melusina whispers a lament for him. I wonder if I have lost my Sight and that the brief glimpses I had in the mirror were the last views of another world that I will not see again.