‘You would bring me down to earth,’ I say slowly, raising my head.

He hesitates, looks down into my face. ‘Not to diminish you,’ he says. ‘Never that. I want you to be whatever you are. But this is who I am. I don’t know about the other world and I don’t care about it. I don’t care about saints or spirits or goddesses or the Stone. All I want is to lie with you, Jacquetta’ – we both register this, his first ever use of my name – ‘Jacquetta, I just desire you, as if you were an ordinary woman and I an ordinary man.’

‘Yes,’ I say. I can feel a sudden pulse of desire. ‘Yes. I don’t care about anything else.’

His mouth is on mine again, his hands are pulling at the neck of my gown, unfastening my belt. ‘Lock the door,’ I say as he shrugs out of his jerkin, and draws me towards him. The moment when he enters me I feel a searing pain which melts into a pleasure that I have never felt before, and so I don’t care about the pain. But I do know, even as we move towards ecstasy, that it is a woman’s pain and that I have become a woman of earth and fire, and I am no longer a girl of water and air.

* * *

‘We have to prevent a child,’ Wodville says to me. We have had a week of secret meetings and we are dizzy with desire and delight in each other. My lord’s funeral has come and gone and I am waiting to hear from my mother as to what she will command me to do. We are beginning, only slowly, to see beyond the blindness of desire, and to wonder what the future will hold for us.

‘I take herbs,’ I say. ‘After that first night I took some herbs. There will be no child. I have made sure of it.’

‘I wish you could foresee what will become of us,’ he says. ‘For I really cannot let you go.’

‘Hush,’ I caution him. My women are nearby, sewing and talking among themselves, but they are accustomed to Richard Woodville coming to my rooms every day. There has been much to plan and arrange and Richard has always been in constant attendance.

‘It’s true,’ he says, his voice lower. ‘It is true, Jacquetta. I cannot let you go.’

‘Then you will have to hold me,’ I reply, smiling down at my work.

‘The king will command that you go to England,’ he says. ‘I can’t just kidnap you.’

I steal a quick glance at his frowning face. ‘Really, you should just kidnap me,’ I prompt.

‘I’ll think of something,’ he swears.

* * *

That night I take the bracelet that my great-aunt gave me, the charm bracelet for foretelling the future. I take a charm shaped like a little ring, a wedding ring, and I take a charm shaped like a ship to represent my voyage to England, and I take a charm in the shape of the castle of St Pol, in case I am summoned back home. I think that I will tie each of them to a thread, put them in the deepest water of the River Seine, and see which thread comes to my hand after the moon has changed. I am about to start tying the threads on the little charms when I stop and laugh at myself. I am not going to do this. There is no need for me to do this.