Over the weeks the question has been passed to and fro between the justices, the serjeants-at-law and the royal attorneys. They are serious men in black fur-lined coats and each has taken his turn to wash his hands of the problem. It is for the lords to determine, they say, and so in the absence of a clear answer, the lords opt for a compromise that serves all in part and none in whole. The King will remain the king, they say, but the Duke of York now becomes his heir.

‘But the Duke is ten years older than the King,’ Sir John says. ‘He is sure to die first. Why ever would he agree?’

‘And why would the King agree to disinherit his own son?’ Richard asks.

‘If indeed he is his own son,’ Sir John counters.

A rumour has been circulating in the Palace Yard that the Queen’s son is not the King’s son, and that the boy was begotten while the King was indisposed. The rumour, swapped once, twice, three times, hardens into fact. The Queen’s son is not the King’s son. Some even say the Duke of Somerset is the real father. Only Katherine asks how the Queen might react to hear of her son disinherited and called a bastard.

‘She will not be best pleased,’ Sir John admits.

‘So this settlement has solved nothing?’ Katherine says.

There is a long pause.

‘No.’

‘So the Queen will come south with her army again?’ she continues.

Again there is a pause.

Finally:

‘Probably.’

22

THOMAS AND KATHERINE follow Sir John and Richard out through Bishopsgate the next morning and they are not alone on the road. The news of the settlement has spread fast and it seems the whole country is taking stock and getting ready for what might come. Armoured men ride in packs, returning to their estates, while friars and messengers hurry in both directions.

Sir John, who has been enlivened by their time in London, now suffers a reverse. He can no longer sit on his trunk, but lies slumped in the hay in the back of the cart as they follow the road up towards Stamford. Near Ancaster there is a turning on the road that leads towards Cornford Castle and as they pass, all look down its hedge-crowded length.

‘I wonder what he’s up to,’ Richard says. ‘I half expected to see him in Westminster.’

Little John Willingham pipes up with the story of his mother selling Edmund Riven ale, of his questions about a girl and how he had been heading north with ten spears. Sir John is asleep at last, but Richard listens.

‘Could mean anything,’ he says, at length. ‘Or nothing.’