My mother blankly meets her gaze. “You have not forgotten the York prince?”

Lady Margaret has blanched white as white. I can see her grip the arms of her chair, and her fingernails are bleached with the pressure of her panic-stricken grip. I glance at my mother; she is enjoying this, like a bear leader teasing the bear with a long-handled prod.

“What d’you mean?” Lady Margaret says and her voice is sharp with fear. “You cannot be suggesting . . .” She breaks off with a little gasp, almost as if she is afraid of what she might say next. “You cannot be saying now . . .”

One of her ladies steps forwards. “Your Grace, are you unwell?”

My mother observes this with detached interest, as an alchemist might observe a transformation. The upstart king’s mother is riven with terror at the very name of a York prince. My mother enjoys the sight for a moment, then she releases her from the spell. “I mean, Edward of Warwick, the son of George, Duke of Clarence,” she says mildly.

Lady Margaret gives a shuddering sigh. “Oh, the Warwick boy,” she says. “The Warwick boy. I had forgotten the Warwick boy.”

“Who else?” my mother asks sweetly. “Who did you think I meant? Who else could I mean?”

“I had not forgotten the Warwick children.” Lady Margaret grasps for her dignity. “I have ordered robes for them too. And gowns for your younger daughters also.”

“I am so pleased,” my mother says pleasantly. “And my daughter’s coronation?”

“Will follow later,” Lady Margaret says, trying to hide that she is gasping, still recovering from her shock, gulping for her words like a landed carp. “After the wedding. When I decide.”

One of her ladies steps forwards with a glass of malmsey and she takes a sip and then another. The color comes back to her cheeks with the sweet wine. “After their wedding they will travel to show themselves to the people. A coronation will follow after the birth of an heir.”

My mother nods, as if the matter is indifferent to her. “Of course, she’s a princess born,” she remarks, quietly pleased that being a princess born is far better than being a pretender king.

“I wish any child to be born at Winchester, at the heart of the old kingdom, Arthur’s kingdom,” Lady Margaret states, struggling to regain her authority. “My son is of the house of Arthur Pendragon.”

“Really?” my mother exclaims, all sweetness. “I thought he was from a Tudor bastard out of a Valois dowager princess. And that, a secret wedding, never proved? How does that trace back to King Arthur?”

Lady Margaret pales with rage, and I want to tug my mother’s sleeve to remind her not to torment this woman. She had Lady Margaret on the run at the mention of a York prince, but we are supplicants at this new court and there is no benefit in making its greatest woman angry.

“I don’t need to explain my son’s inheritance to you, whose own marriage and title was only restored by us, after you had been named as an adulteress,” Lady Margaret says bluntly. “I have told you of the arrangements for the wedding, I will not delay you further.”