PARIS, FRANCE, MAY 1433

We travel with a great entourage as befits the ruler of France, especially a ruler who holds his lands by force. Ahead of us go an armed guard, a vanguard under the command of the blue-eyed squire, to make sure that the way is safe. Then, after a little gap to let the dust settle, come my lord duke and I. I ride behind a burly man at arms, seated pillion, my hands on his belt. My lord rides his war horse beside me, as if for company, but he barely says one word.

‘I wish I could ride a horse on my own,’ I remark.

He glances at me as if he had forgotten I was there at all. ‘Not today,’ he says. ‘It will be hard riding today, and if we meet trouble, we might have to go fast. We can’t go at a lady’s pace, a girl’s pace.’

I say nothing for it is true, I am not much of a rider. Then I try again to make a conversation with him. ‘And why is it hard riding today, my lord?’

For a moment he is silent as if considering whether he can be troubled to answer me.

‘We’re not going to Paris. We’re going north to Calais.’

‘Excuse me, but I thought we were going to Paris. Why are we going to Calais, my lord?’

He sighs as if two questions are too much for a man to bear.

‘There was a mutiny at Calais among the garrison, my soldiers, recruited and commanded by me. Bloody fools. I called in on my way to you. Hanged the ringleaders. Now I’m going back to make sure the rest have learned their lesson.’

‘You hanged men on your way to our wedding?’

He turns his dark gaze on me. ‘Why not?’

I can’t really say why not, it just seems to me rather disagreeable. I make a little face and turn away. He laughs shortly. ‘Better for you that the garrison should be strong,’ he says. ‘Calais is the rock. All of England’s lands in northern France are built on our holding Calais.’

We ride on in silence. He says almost nothing when we stop to eat at midday except to ask if I am very tired, and when I say no, he sees that I am fed and then lifts me back to the pillion saddle for the rest of the ride. The squire comes back and sweeps his hat off to me in a low bow and then mutters to my lord in a rapid conference, after which we all fall in and ride on.

It is twilight as we see the great walls of the castle of Calais looming out of the misty sea plain ahead of us. The land all around is intersected with ditches and canals, divided with little gates, eh of them swirling with mist. My lord’s squire comes riding back when the flag over the top tower of the castle dips in acknowledgement, and the great gates ahead of us swing open. ‘Soon be home,’ he says cheerfully to me as he wheels his horse round.

‘Not my home,’ I observe shortly.

‘Oh, it will be,’ he says. ‘This is one of your greatest castles.’

‘In the middle of a mutiny?’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s over now. The garrison hadn’t been paid for months and so the soldiers took the wool from the Calais merchants, stole it from their stores. Then the merchants paid to get their goods back, now my lord the duke will repay them.’ He grins at my puzzled face. ‘It’s nothing. If the soldiers had been paid on time it would never have happened.’

‘Then why did my lord execute someone?’

His smile dims. ‘So that they remember that next time their wages are late, they have to wait on his pleasure.’

I glance at my silently listening husband on my other side.

‘And what happens now?’

We are approaching the walls, the soldiers are mustering into a guard of honour, running down the steep hill from the castle which sits at the centre of the town, guarding the port to the north and the marshy land to the south.

‘Now I dismiss the men who stole the goods, dismiss their commander, and appoint a new Captain of Calais,’ my husband says shortly. He looks across me at the squire. ‘You.’

‘I, my lord?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m honoured, but . . . ’

‘Are you arguing with me?’

‘No, my lord, of course not.’

My husband smiles at the silenced young man. ‘That’s good.’ To me he says, ‘This young man, my squire, my friend, Richard Woodville, has fought in almost every campaign here in France and was knighted on the battlefield by the late king, my brother. His father served us too. He’s not yet thirty years old but I know of no-one more loyal or trustworthy. He can command this garrison and while he is here I can be sure that there will be no mutinies, and no complaints, and no petty thieving. And there will be no arguing about my orders. Is that right, Woodville?’

‘Quite right, sir,’ he says.

And then the three of us go through the dark echoing doorway and up the cobbled streets, past the hanged mutineers swinging silently on the gallows, through the bowing citizens to the castle of Calais.

‘Am I to stay here now?’ Woodville asks, as if it is a mere matter of a bed for the night.

‘Not yet,’ my husband says. ‘I have need of you by me.’

We stay only three nights, long enough for my husband to dismiss half of the soldiers of the garrison and send to England for their replacements, long enough to warn their commander that he will be replaced by the squire Sir Richard Woodville, and ten we rattle down the cobbled street and out of the gateway and go south down the road to Paris, the squire Woodville at the head of the troop once more, me on the lumbering horse of the man at arms, and my husband in grim silence.

It is a two-day ride before we see the Grange Batelière standing over the desolate countryside outside the city. Beyond it are worked fields and little dairy farms which gradually give way to small market gardens that surround the city walls. We enter through the north-west gate, close to the Louvre, and see at once my Paris home, the Hôtel de Bourbon, one of the greatest houses in the city, as befits the ruler of France. It stands beside the king’s palace of the Louvre, looking south over the river, like a building in marchpane, all turrets and roofs and towers and balconies. I should have known that it would be a great house, having seen my lord’s castle at Rouen; but when we ride up to the great gates I feel like a princess in a story being taken into a giant’s fortress. A fortified wall runs all around, and there is a guard house at every gate, which reminds me, if I were in any danger of forgetting, that my husband may be the ruler but not everyone recognises him as the representative of the God-given king. The one that many prefer to call the King of France is not far away, at Chinon, eyeing our lands and stirring up trouble. The one that we call the King of France and England is safe in London, too poor to send my husband the money and troops he needs to keep these faithless lands in subjection, too weak to command his lords to come to fight under our standard.

My lord gives me several days of freedom to find my way around my new home, to discover the former duchess’s jewel box, and her dressing room of furs and fine gowns, and then he comes to my room after Matins and says, ‘Come, Jacquetta, I have work for you today.’

I follow him, trotting like a puppy at his heels, as he leads me through the gallery where tapestries of gods look down on us, to a double door at the end, two men at arms on either side, and his squire, Woodville, lounging on the windowsill. He jumps up when he sees us and gives me a low bow.

The men at arms swing open the doors and we go inside. I don’t know what I am expecting; certainly not this. First there is a room as big as a great hall but looking like a library in a monastery. There are shelves of dark wood and on them are scrolls and books, locked away behind brass grilles. There are tall tables and high stools so that you can sit up at a desk and unfurl a scroll and read it at your leisure. There are tables made ready for study with pots of ink and sharpened quills and pages of paper ready for taking notes. I have never seen anything like it outside of an abbey, and I look up at my husband with new respect. He has spent a fortune here: each one of these books will have cost as much as the duchess’s jewels.

‘I have the finest collection of books and manuscripts outside the Church in Europe,’ he says. ‘And my own copyists.’ He gestures to two young men, either side of a stand, one of whom is intoning strange words, reading from a scroll, while the other, painstakingly, writes. ‘Translating from the Arabic,’ my husband says. ‘Arabic to Latin and from there to French or English. The Moors are the source of great knowledge, of all mathematics, all science. I buy the scrolls and I have them translated myself. This is how I have put us ahead in the search for knowledge. Because I have tapped the source.’ He smiles, suddenly pleased with me. ‘Just as I have with you. I have gone to the very source of the mysteries.’

In the centre of the roomis a great table, painted and sculpted. I exclaim in delight, and step closer to examine it. It is enchanting, like a little country, if one could view it from above, flying high over it like an eagle. It is the country of France; I can see the outer wall of the city of Paris, and the Seine flowing through, painted bright blue. I can see the Ile de Paris, a little maze of buildings shaped like a boat itself, set in the river. Then I can see how the land is divided: the top half of France is painted white and red in the colours of England and the bottom half is left blank, and Armagnac flag shows Charles, the pretend king, in his lands at Chinon. A series of scratches shows where the little flags were stabbed, furiously, rapidly, in the plan marking the triumphant march of Joan of Arc, halfway across France, victorious all the way, and then up to the very walls of Paris, only two years ago.

‘The whole of France is ours by right,’ my husband says, looking jealously at the green lands that lead down to the Mediterranean sea. ‘And we will have it. We will have it. I shall win it for God and King Harry.’

He leans forwards. ‘Look, we are advancing,’ he says, showing me the little flags of St George for England spreading over the east of France. ‘And if the Duke of Burgundy will remain true, and a good ally, we can win back our lands in Maine. If the Dauphin is fool enough to attack the duke – and I think that he is – and if I can persuade the duke that we both fight at once . . . ’ He breaks off as he sees I am looking upwards. ‘Oh, those are my planets,’ he says, as if he owns the night skies quite as much as he does France.

Suspended from criss-crossing wooden beams is a series of beautiful silver spheres, some of them ringed with silver haloes, some with other tiny balls floating nearby. It is such a pretty sight that I forget all about the map and the flags of campaigns and clasp my hands together. ‘Oh, how pretty! What is this?’

Woodville the squire gives a little choke of laughter.

‘It is not for amusement,’ my husband says dourly. Then he nods at one of the clerks. ‘Oh well – show the duchess the skies at her birth.’

The young man steps forwards. ‘Excuse me, Your Grace, when were you born?’

I flush. Like almost all girls I don’t know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carrying me and swears that she ate it too green and her belly-ache brought on my birth. ‘Spring 1416,’ I say. ‘Perhaps May?’

He pulls out a scroll from the library and spreads it across the tall desk. He looks at it carefully, then reaches out and pulls one of the levers, then another, then another. To my absolute delight the balls, with their haloes, and the little balls spinning, descend from the rafters, and move gently around until they are positioned, swaying slightly, in the places in heaven that they held at the moment of my birth. There is a sweet tinkling noise, and I see that the spheres have tiny silver bells attached to the strings that move them, so they play as they take their places.

‘I can predict where the planets will be before I start a battle,’ my husband says. ‘I only launch a campaign when they tell me the stars are propitious. But it takes hours to calculate on paper, and it is easy to make a mistake. Here we have built a mechanism as beautiful and as regular as God made when He put the stars in the sky and set them in motion. I have made a machine like the workings of God Himself.’

‘Can you foretell with them? Can you know what will happen?’

He shakes his head. ‘Not as I hope that you will do for us. I can tell when the time is ripe, but not the nature of the fruit. I can tell that our star is in the ascendant, but not the outcome of a particular battle. And we had no warning at all of the witch of Arc.’

The clerk tilts his head sadly. ‘Satan hid her from us,’ he says simply. ‘There was no darkness, there was no comet, there was nothing to show her rising, and nothing marked her death, praise to God.’

My husband nods and puts his hand under my arm and leads me away from the table and past the clerk. ‘My brother was a man of Mars,’ he says. ‘Heat and fire, heat and dryness: a man born to fight and win battles. His son is wet and cold, a man young in years but like a child in his heart, damp like a wet baby drinking milk and pissing in his clout. I have to wait for the stars to put some fire into his cause, I have to study for weapons to put into his hand. He is my nephew, I must guide him. I am his uncle, and he is my king; I have to make him victorious. It is my duty; it is my destiny. You will help me in this, too.’

Woodville waits for a moment, then, as my lord seems to have fallen into deep thought, he opens the door to the next room, pushes it wide, and stands back so we can go through. I step into the stone-floored room and my nose prickles at the strange scents. There is a tang like the smell of a forge – hot metal, but also something acidic and sharp. The air is acrid with a smoke that stings my eyes. In the centre of the room are four men, dressed in leather aprons, charcoal fires glowing before them in little braziers set into stone benches, vessels of bronze bubbling like sauce pots. Beyond them, through the open door that leads to an inner yard, I can see a lad stripped to the waist working the bellows of a furnace, heating a great chamber like a bread oven. I look across at Woodville. He gives me a reassuring nod as if to say, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ But the smell of the room is sulphurous, and the furnace outside glows like the entrance to hell. I shrink back and my husband laughs at my pale face.

‘Nothing to fear, I told you there would be nothing to fear. This is where they work on the recipes, this is where they try one elixir and then another. Out there we forge the metals and bring them in to be tested. This is where we are going to make silver, gold, to make life itself.’

‘It’s so hot,’ I say weakly.

‘These are the fires that make water turn to wine,’ he explains. ‘That make iron turn to gold, that make earth turn to life. Everything in this world is growing to a state of purity, of perfection. This is where we speed it up, this is where we make the changes to metals and to waters that the world itself does in its deep bowels, over centuries, with heat like hatching an egg into a chicken. We make it hotter, we make it faster. This is where we can test what we know, and see what we learn. This is the heart of my life’s work.’

Outside in the yard someone pulls a red-hot bar of metal from the coals of the furnace, and starts to hammer it flat.

‘Just think if I could make gold,’ he says longingly. ‘If I could take iron and purify it so that the com traces were burned from it, washed away, so that we had gold coin. I could hire soldiers, I could reinforce defences, I could feed Paris. If I had my own mint and my own gold mine I could take all of France for my nephew and keep it forever.’

‘Is it possible?’

‘We know it can be done,’ he says. ‘Indeed, it has been done, many, many times though always in secret. All metal is of the same nature, everything is made of the same thing: “first matter”, they call it in the books, “dark matter”. This is the stuff that the world is made of. We have to remake it, make it again. So we take dark matter, and we refine it, and refine it again. We make it transform into its purest and best nature.’ He pauses, looking at my puzzled face. ‘You know that they make wine with the juice that comes from grapes?’

I nod.

‘Any French peasant can do that. First he takes the grapes, then he crushes them for their juice. He takes a fruit – a solid thing, growing on a vine – and makes it into a liquid. That’s alchemy itself, making that change. Then he stores it and lets the life within it change that juice into wine. Another liquid but one with quite different properties from the juice. Now I can go further. I have done another change, right here. I can make an essence from wine that is a hundred times stronger than wine, which burns at the sight of a flame, which cures a man of melancholy and watery humours. It is a liquid but it is hot and dry. We call it aqua vitae – the water of life. All this I can do already, I can change juice to aqua vitae – the gold is just the next step, gold from iron.’

‘And what am I to do?’ I ask nervously.

‘Nothing today,’ he says. ‘But perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, they will need you to come and pour some liquid from a flask, or stir a bowl, or sieve some dust. Nothing more than that, you could have done as much in your mother’s dairy.’

I look at him blankly.

‘It is your touch I want,’ he says. ‘The pure touch.’

One of the men, who has been watching a flask bubble and then overflow through a tube into a cooled dish set in a bath of ice, puts it to one side and comes towards us, wiping his hands on his apron and bowing to my husband.

‘The Maid,’ my husband says, gesturing to me as if I am as much an object as the fluid in the flask or the iron in the furnace. I flinch at being given Joan’s name. ‘As I promised. I have her. Melusina’s daughter and a virgin untouched by any man.’

I put out my hand in greeting but the man recoils from me. He laughs at himself and says, smiling to my husband, ‘I hardly dare to touch her. Indeed, I can not!’

Instead, he puts his hand behind his back and bows very low and says directly to me, ‘You are welcome, Lady Bedford. Your presence here has been needed for a long time. We have waited for you. We have hoped that you would come. You will bring a harmony with you, you will bring the power of the moon and water with you, and your touch will make all things pure.’

I step awkwardly from one foot to the other, and glance at my husband. He is looking at me with a sort of hot approbation. ‘I found her, and I recognised at once what she could be,’ he says. ‘W could do. I knew that she could be Luna for us. She has water in her veins and her heart is pure. Who knows what she might not be able to do?’

‘Can she scry?’ the man asks eagerly.

‘She says she has never tried, but she has already foreseen the future,’ my husband replies. ‘Shall we try her?’

‘In the library.’ The man leads the way back through the door. My husband snaps his fingers and the two scholars take themselves off into a side room, as the alchemist and Woodville the squire pull a cloth off the biggest looking glass I have ever seen, framed in a case, completely round, shining silver, like a full moon.

‘Close the shutters,’ my husband says. ‘And light the candles.’ He is breathless, I can hear the excitement in his voice, and it makes me fearful. They ring me with candles so that I am encircled in fire and they put me before the big mirror. It is so bright I can hardly see for the winking bobbing flames around me.

‘You ask her,’ my husband says to the alchemist. ‘Before God, I am so excited, I can’t speak. But don’t tax her overmuch, let’s just see if she has a gift.’

‘Look in the mirror,’ the man commands me quietly. ‘Let yourself look in the mirror and let yourself dream. Now, Maid, what can you see?’

I look at the mirror. Surely it is obvious what I can see? Myself, in a velvet gown cut in the very latest fashion with a horned headdress on my head, my golden hair captured in a thick net on each side of my face, and the most wonderful shoes of blue leather. I have never before seen a mirror that could show me myself, all of me, full size. I lift my gown a little so I can admire my shoes, and the alchemist makes a little dry cough as if to remind me to beware vanity. ‘What can you see when you look deeply, Duchess?’

Behind me and to the side of me is a dazzle of candles so bright that they drain the colour from the gown, even from the blue shoes, even from the shelves and the books behind me that, as I look, grow darker and more misty.

‘Look deep into the mirror and say what you can see,’ the man urges again, his voice low. ‘Tell us what you can see, Lady Bedford. What can you see?’

The light is overwhelming, it is too bright to see anything, I cannot even see my own face, dazzled by the hundreds of candles. And then I see her, as clearly as the day when we lazed by the moat, as brightly as when she was alive and laughing, before the moment when she drew the card of le Pendu in his suit as blue as my shoes.

‘Joan,’ I say quietly with deep sorrrow. ‘Oh, Joan. The Maid.’

I struggle to come back to wakefulness through the noise of the alchemist flapping at the candles to put them out. Some must have fallen over when I went down in a faint. Woodville the squire has me in his arms, holding up my head, and my husband is sprinkling cold water in my face.

‘What did you see?’ my lord demands as soon as my eyelids flutter open.

‘I don’t know.’ For some reason, a sudden pang of fear warns me. I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to say Joan’s name to the man who had her burned alive.

‘What did he say?’ He glares at the squire and at the alchemist. ‘As she went down? She said something. I heard something. What did she say?’

‘Did she say “the Maid”?’ the alchemist asks. ‘I think she did.’

They both look at Woodville.

‘She said “it’s made”,’ he lies easily.

‘What could she mean?’ The duke looks at me. ‘What did you mean? What d’you mean, Jacquetta?’

‘Would it be Your Grace’s university at Caen?’ Woodville asks. ‘I think she said “Caen”, and then she said “it’s made”.’

‘I saw Your Grace’s planned university at Caen,’ I say, taking up the prompt. ‘Completed. Beautiful. That’s what I said: “it’s made”.’

He smiles, he is pleased. ‘Well, that’s a good vision,’ he says, encouraged. ‘That’s a good glimpse of a safe and happy future. That’s good news. And best of all, we see she can do it.’

He puts out his arm and helps me to my feet. ‘So,’ he says with a triumphant smile to the alchemist, ‘I will bring her back tomorrow, after Mass, after she has broken her fast. Get a chair for her to sit on next time, and make the room ready for her. We will see what she can tell us. But she can do it, can’t she?’

‘Without a doubt,’ agrees the alchemist. ‘And I will have everything ready.’

He bows and goes back into the inner room, and Woodville picks up the rest of the candles and blows them out, and my lord straightens the mirror. I lean for a moment against an archway between one set of shelves and another, and my husband glances up and sees me.

‘Stand there.’ He gestures me to the centre of the arch, and watches as I obey him. I stand still, framed in the arch, wondering what he wants now. He is staring at me as if I were a picture or a tapestry myself, as if he sees me as an object, a new thing to be framed or translated or shelved. He narrows his eyes as if considering me as a vista, or a statue that he might have bought. ‘I am so glad that I married you,’ he says, and there is no affection in his voice at all but the satisfied tone of a man who has added something to his beautiful collection – and that at a good price. ‘Whatever it costs me, with Burgundy, with whoever, I am so glad that I married you. You are my treasure.’

I glance nervously at Richard Woodville who has heard this speech of acquisition; but he is busy throwing the cloth over the looking glass, and quite deaf.

Every morning my lord escorts me to the library and they seat me before the mirror and light the candles all around me, and ask me to look into the brightness and tell them what I see. I find I go into a sort of daze, not quite asleep but almost dreaming, and sometimes I see extraordinary visions on the swimming silver surface of the mirror. I see a baby in a cradle, I see a ring shaped like a golden crown dangling from a dripping thread, and one morning I turn from the mirror crying out, for I see a battle, and behind it another battle, a long lane of battles and men dying, dying in mist, dying in snow, dying in a churchyard.

‘Did you see the standards?’ my husband demands as they press a glass of small ale into my hand. ‘Drink. Did you see the standards? You said nothing clearly. Did you see where the battles were taking place? Could you tell the armies one from another?’

I shake my head.

‘Could you see what town? Was it anywhere you recognise? Come and see if you can point out the town on the map. Do you think it is happening right now, or is it a vision from the future that will come?’

He drags me to the table where the little world of France is laid before me and I look, dazed, at the patchwork of ownership and roll of the hills. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘There was a mist and an army forcing their way uphill. There was snow and it was red with blood. There was a queen with her horse at a forge and they were putting the horseshoes on backwards.’

He looks at me as if he would like to shake some sense out of me. ‘This is no good to me, girl,’ he says, his voice very low. ‘I can get cursed in any Saturday market. I need to know what is going to happen this year. I need to know what is going to happen in France. I need names of towns and the numbers of rebels. I need to know in detail.’

Dumbly, I look back at him. His face is suffused with darkness in his frustration with me. ‘I am saving a kingdom here,’ he says. ‘I need more than mist and snow. I did not marry you for you to tell me about queens with their horseshoes on back to front. What next? Mermaids in the bath?’

I shake my head. Truly, I know nothing.

‘Jacquetta, I swear, you will be sorry if you defy me,’ he says with quiet menace. ‘This is too important for you to play the fool.’

‘Perhaps we should not overtax her?’ Woodville suggests, addressing the bookshelves. ‘Perhaps every day is too much for her. She is only young and new to the work. Perhaps we should train her up to it, like a little eyas, a young falcon. Perhaps we should release her to ride and walk in the mornings, and only have her scry perhaps once a week?’

‘Not if she has a warning!’ the duke breaks out. ‘Not if it is now! She cannot rest if we are in danger. If this battle in mist and this battle in snow is going to be fought this winter in France, we need to know now.’

‘You know that the Dauphin has not the arms or the allies for it to be now.’ Woodville turns to him. ‘It cannot be a warning of now, it will be a fearful dream of the future. Her head is filled with fears of war, and we ourselves have frightened her. We have put the visions in her mind. But we need to clear her head, we need to give her some peace so that she can be a clean stream for us. You bought her’ – he stumbles and corrects himself – ‘You found her unspoiled. We must take care not to muddy the waters.’

‘Once a month!’ the alchemist suddenly remarks. ‘As I said at the start, my lord, she should be speaking when her element is on the rise. On the eve of the new moon. She is a being of the moon and of water, she will see most clearly and speak most clearly when the moon is in the ascendant. She should work on those days, under a rising moon.’

‘She could come in the evening, by moonlight.’ My husband thinks aloud. ‘That m="0lp.’ He looks critically at me, as I lean back in the chair, my hand on my throbbing forehead. ‘You’re right,’ he says to Woodville. ‘We have asked too much of her, too soon. Take her out riding, take her down by the river. And we set off for England next week, we can go by easy stages. She’s pale, she needs to rest. Take her out this morning.’ He smiles at me. ‘I am not a hard task-master, Jacquetta, though there is much to be done and I am in a hurry to do it. You can have some time at your leisure. Go to the stables, you will see I have left a surprise for you there.’

I am so relieved to be out of the room that I don’t remember to say ‘thank you’, and only when the door is closed behind us do I start to be curious.

‘What does my lord have for me in the stables?’ I ask Wood ville as he follows, half a step behind me, down the circular stair from the gallery to the inner courtyard, and as we walk across the cobbles, past the armoury to the stable yard. Menservants carrying vegetables to the kitchens and butchers with great haunches of beef slung over their shoulders fall back before me and bow. The milkmaids coming in from the fields with buckets swinging from their yokes drop down in a curtsey so low that their pails clatter on the cobbles. I don’t acknowledge them; now I hardly see them. I have been a duchess for only a few weeks and already I am accustomed to the exaggerated bows that precede me wherever I go, and the reverent murmur of my name as I walk past.

‘What would be your greatest wish?’ Woodville asks me. He at any rate does not serve me in awestruck silence. He has the confidence born of being at my husband’s right hand since he was a boy. His father served the English King Henry V, and then my husband the duke, and now Woodville, raised in the duke’s service, is the most trusted and most beloved of all the squires, commander of Calais, trusted with the keys to France.

‘A new litter?’ I ask. ‘One with golden curtains and furs?’

‘Perhaps. Would you really want that more than anything else?’

I pause. ‘Does he have a horse for me? A new horse of my very own?’

He looks thoughtful. ‘What colour horse would you like best?’

‘A grey!’ I say longingly. ‘A beautiful dappled grey horse with a mane like white silk, and dark interesting eyes.’

‘Interesting?’ He chokes on his laughter. ‘Interesting eyes?’

‘You know what I mean, eyes that look as if the horse can understand you, as if she is thinking.’

He nods. ‘I do know what you mean, actually.’

He gives me his arm to guide me round a cart laden with pikes; we are passing the armoury, and the weapons master is counting in a new delivery with a tally stick. Hundreds, thousands of pikes are being unloaded, the campaign season is starting again. No wonder my husband sits me before the scrying mirror every day to ask me where is the best place to mount our attack. We are at war, constantly at war, and none of us has ever lived in a country at peace.

We go through the archway to the stables and Woodville steps back to see my face as I scan the yard. Each of the horses of household has a stall facing south so the mellow stone is warmed through the day. I see my husband’s four great war horses, their heads nodding over the door. I see Woodville’s strong horse for jousting and his other horses for hunting and riding messages, and then I see, smaller than any of them, with bright ears that flick one way and another, the perfectly shaped head of a grey horse, so bright in colour that she is almost like silver in the sunshine of the yard.

‘Is that mine?’ I whisper to Woodville. ‘Is that for me?’

‘That is yours,’ he says almost reverently. ‘As beautiful and as high-bred as her mistress.’

‘A mare?’

‘Of course.’

I go towards her, and her ears point to listen to my footsteps and my cooing voice as I come close. Woodville puts a crust of bread into my hand and I step up to her and take in the dark liquid eyes, the beautifully straight face, the silvery mane of the horse that I described, here before me, as if I had performed magic and wished her into being. I stretch out my hand and she sniffs, her nostrils wide, and then she lips the treat from my hand. I can smell her warm coat, her oaty breath, the comfortable scent of the barn behind her.

Woodville opens the stable door for me and without hesitation I step inside. She shifts a little to make room for me, and turns her head and sniffs at me, the pockets of my gown, my belt, my trailing sleeves, and then my shoulders, my neck and my face. And as she sniffs me, I turn to her, as if we are two animals coming together. Then slowly, gently, I reach out my hand and she droops her head for my caress.

Her neck is warm, her coat silky, the skin behind her ears is tender and soft, she allows me gently to pull the mane on her poll, to stroke her face, and then she raises her head and I touch her flared nostrils, the soft delicate skin of her muzzle, her warm muscled lips, and hold, in my cupped hand, the fat curve of her chin.

‘Is it love?’ Woodville asks quietly from the doorway. ‘For it looks like love from here.’

‘It is love,’ I breathe.

‘Your first love,’ he confirms.

‘My only love,’ I whisper to her.

He laughs like an indulgent brother. ‘Then you must compose a poem and come and sing to her like a woman troubadour, a trobairitz. But what is your fair lady’s name?’

I look thoughtfully at her, as she moves quietly away from me and takes a mouthful of hay. The scent of the meadow comes from the crushed grasses. ‘Mercury,’ I say. ‘I think I’ll call her Mercury.’

He looks a little oddly at me. ‘That’s not such a good name. The alchemists are always talking of Mercury,’ he says. ‘A shape-shifter, a messenger from the gods, one of the three great ingredients of their work. Sometimes Mercury is helpful, sometimes not, a partner to Melusina, the water goddess who also changes her form. A messenger that you have to employ in the absence of any other; but not always reliable.’

I shrug my shoulders. ‘I don’t want more alchemy,’ I insist. ‘Not in the stable yard as well as everywhere else. I shall call her Merry but she and I will know her true name.Is it l

‘I will know too,’ he says; but I have already turned my back on him to pull out wisps of hay to give to her.

‘You don’t matter,’ I observe.

I ride my horse every morning, with an armed escort of ten men ahead of me and ten behind, and Woodville at my side. We go through the streets of Paris, looking away from the beggars starving in the gutters, and we ignore the people who stretch out imploring hands. There is terrible poverty in the city and the countryside is all but waste, the farmers cannot get their produce to market, and the crops are constantly trampled by one or other of the armies. The men run away from their villages and hide in the forests for fear of being recruited or hanged as traitors, so there is no-one but women to work the fields. The price of bread in the city is more than a man can earn, and besides, there is no work but soldiering and the English are late with their wages again. Woodville gives orders that we must ride at a hand-gallop through the streets, not just for fear of beggars but also for fear of disease. My predecessor, the Duchess Anne, died of a fever after visiting the hospital. Now my lord swears that I shall not so much as speak to a poor person, and Woodville rushes me through the streets and I don’t draw breath until we are out of the city gates and going through what once were busy gardens, the fertile tilled land that lies between the city walls and the river. Only then does Woodville order the armed men to halt and dismount, and wait for us, while the two of us ride down to the river and take the tow path and listen to the water as if we were a couple riding in a countryside at peace.

We go companionably, side by side, and talk of nothing of any importance. He helps me with my riding, I have never ridden so fine a horse as Merry, and he shows me how to straighten up in the saddle, and gather her up so she curves her neck and stretches out her stride. He shows me how he rides a cavalry charge, bent low over the horse’s neck, going ahead of me down the track and thundering back towards us, pulling up at the last moment so Merry sidles and dances on the spot. He teaches me how to jump, getting off his horse to drag little branches of wood across the deserted track, building them higher and higher as my confidence increases. He teaches me the exercises his father taught him in the lanes of England, riding exercises to improve balance and courage: sitting sideways like a girl riding pillion, lying backwards across the horse, with the saddle in the small of my back, while the horse jogs along, sitting up tall and stretching one arm then another up to the sky, crouching down low to touch my stirrups, anything which accustoms the horse to the idea that it must go on steadily and safely, whatever the rider does, whatever happens around it.

‘More than once my horse has taken me to safety when I was hurt and didn’t have a clue where we were going,’ Richard says. ‘And my father held the standard before Henry V of England, and so he rode at a gallop all the time, with only one hand on the reins. You will never ride in battle, but we might run into trouble here or in England, and it is good to know that Merry will carry you through anything.’

He dismounts and takes my stirrups and crosses them out of the way, in front of me. ‘We’ll do a mile at trot, without stirrups. To improve your balance.’

‘How should we ride into trouble?’ I ask as he gets back on his own horse.

He shrugs. ‘Tere was a plan to ambush the duke only a few years ago as they came back to Paris and he and the Duchess Anne had to take to the forest tracks and ride round the enemy camp. And I hear that the roads in England are now as unsafe as those in France. There are robbers and highwaymen on every English road, and near the coast there are pirates who land and take captives and sell them into slavery.’

We start off at a walk. I seat myself more firmly in the saddle and Merry’s ears go forwards. ‘Why does the King of England not guard his coasts?’

‘He’s still a child and the country is ruled by his other uncle, Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester. My lord and the Duke of Gloucester are the royal uncles, each regents of France and England, until the king takes his power.’

‘When will he do that?’

‘He should have done it by now, really,’ Woodville says. ‘He is twelve years old; a boy still, but old enough to rule with good advisors. And he has been crowned at Notre Dame in Paris, and in England, and he has a parliament and a council which have promised to obey him. But he is guided by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, and all of his friends; and then his mind is changed by his other kinsman, Cardinal Beaufort, a very powerful and persuasive man. Between the two of them he is blown about one way to another, and he never sees our lord the Duke of Bedford, who can do no more than write to him and try to keep him to one path. They say that he does the bidding of the person who spoke to him last.

‘But anyway, even if he were older, or firmer, there would be no money to pay for defences from the sea, and the English lords don’t make the rule of law run through their lands as they should. Now we shall trot.’

He waits for me to squeeze my legs on Merry and she goes forwards into a trot with me sitting heavily, like a fat cavalry knight, deep in the saddle.

‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘Now go forwards to canter.’

‘You said trot!’

‘You’re doing so well,’ he says with a grin. I urge Merry on and she goes into her quick-paced canter. I am a little afraid without the stirrups to use as balance but he is right, I can sit in the saddle and grip with my legs as we go cantering down the tow path until he gives the hand-signal to slow, then pull up.

‘Why do I have to learn this?’ I ask breathlessly as he dismounts again to restore my stirrups.

‘In case you lose your stirrups, or one breaks, or if we have to ride away some time, when we can get hold of horses but no saddles. It’s good to be prepared for anything. Tomorrow we will practise riding bareback. I shall make you into a horsewoman. Already you could be trusted on a long ride.’

He swings back into his own saddle and we turn the horses’ heads for home.

‘And why don’t the English lords make the rule of law run through the country?’ I ask, returning to our conversation. ‘In France there are two rules of law, two kings. But at least the lords are obedient to the king who rules in their part.’

‘In England, they each make their own little lordship,’ he says. ‘They use the troubled times as a screen to serve themselves, to gain their own land, to make war on ht= neighbours. When the young king does decide to take his power, he will find he has to challenge the very people who should be his friends and advisors. He will need my lord duke at his side then.’

‘Will we have to go to England and live there? Will I have to live in England?’ I ask anxiously.

‘It is home,’ he says simply. ‘And even at its worst, one acre of England is worth ten square miles of France.’

I look at him blankly. ‘All you Englishmen are the same,’ I tell him. ‘You all think that you are divinely blessed by God for no better reason than you had the longbow at Agincourt.’

He laughs. ‘We are,’ he says. ‘We think rightly. We are divinely blessed. And perhaps when we go to England there will be time for me to show you my home. And perhaps you will agree with me.’

I have a little thrill of pleasure, as if something wonderful were going to happen to me. ‘Where is your home?’ I ask.

‘Grafton, Northamptonshire,’ he says, and I can hear the love in his voice. ‘Probably the most beautiful countryside, in what is the best country in all the world.’

We have one more attempt at scrying at the mirror before it is packed up to travel with us as we start on our journey to England. My lord is anxious for me to predict if it is safe for him to leave France. The Armagnac pretender has no money and no army and is badly advised by his court of favourites, but still my lord John is afraid that if he goes to England there will be no-one who can hold France against this man who claims he is king. I completely fail in my wifely duty to advise him, I see nothing. They sit me on a chair and I stare into the bright reflected candlelight until I am dizzy and – far from fainting – am in danger of falling asleep. For two hours my lord stands behind me and shakes my shoulder when he sees my head nod, until the alchemist says quietly, ‘I don’t think it is coming to her today, my lord,’ and the duke turns and stalks out of the room without a word to me.

The alchemist helps me from the chair and Woodville blows out the candles and opens the shutters to let the smell of smoke out of the room. The small sickle of a new moon looks in on me and I dip a curtsey and turn over the coins in my little pocket and make a wish. The alchemist exchanges a look with Woodville as if they have spent all the evening with a peasant girl who curtseys to a new moon and wishes for a lover, but has no learning and has no vision and is a waste of everyone’s time.

‘Never mind,’ Woodville says cheerfully, offering me his arm. ‘We leave for England in the morning and they won’t ask you to do this for another month.’

‘Are they bringing the mirror with us?’ I ask apprehensively.

‘The mirror and some of the books; but the vessels and the oven and the forge stay here of course, they will continue with their work while we are away.’

‘And do they discover anything?’

He nods. ‘Oh yes, my lord has refined silver and gold to a purer level than any man has ever done before. He is working on new metals, new combinations for greater strength or greater suppleness. And of course, if he could mke the stone itself . . . ’

‘The stone?’

‘They call it the philosopher’s stone, that turns metal to gold, water to the elixir vitae, that gives the owner eternal life.’

‘Is there such a thing?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘There have been many reports of it, it is well-known in the old manuscripts that he has had translated here. Throughout Christendom and in the East there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of men working on it right now. But my lord duke is in the vanguard. If he could find it, if you could help him to find it, we could bring peace to France and to England.’

The noise of the castle packing up and readying for a great journey wakes me at dawn and I go to the chapel to hear Matins as the sun is rising. The priest finishes the service and starts to pack up the sacred pictures and the crucifix and the monstrance. We are taking almost everything with us.

In my own rooms my ladies in waiting are folding my gowns into great travelling chests and calling the pages to cord them up, and the grooms of the household to seal them. The jewel boxes they will carry themselves, my furs will be guarded by the grooms of the household. Nobody knows how long we will stay in England. Woodville becomes very cautious when I ask him. Clearly, my husband is not being adequately supported by his nephew the king, nor financed as he should be by the English parliament that has to raise taxes for the war in France. The purpose of the trip is to make them see that English coins buy French support; and they must pay. But nobody knows how long it will take to make the English understand that they cannot have an army for free.

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.’

‘My horse?’ the duke asks. Woodville snaps his fingers and a waiting groom brings my lord’s great war horse forwards.

‘And my lady is going in her litter?’

‘Her Grace said she wanted to ride.’

My lord duke turns to me. ‘It is a long way, Jacquetta, we will go north out of Paris and sleep tonight at Senlis. You will be in the saddle for the whole day.’

‘I can do that,’ I say, and I glance at Woodville.

‘She’s a strong horse, you chose well,’ he says to my husband. ‘And the duchess is a good rider, she will be able to keep up. It would probably be more pleasant for her than jolting around in her litter, though I will have it follow behind us, so if she gets tired she can change.’

‘Very well then,’ the duke agrees. He smiles at me. ‘I shall enjoy your company. What d’you call your mare?’

‘I call her Merry,’ I say.

‘God send that we are all merry,’ he says, stepping on the mounting block to haul himself into the saddle. Woodville takes me by the waist and lifts me up into my saddle, and then stands back while my lady in waiting bustles forwards and pulls the long skirts of my gown so they fall down either side, hiding my leather riding boots.

‘All right?’ Woodville asks me quietly, standing close to the horse as he checks the tightness of the girth.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be just behind you, if you want anything. If you get tired, or need to stop, just raise your hand. I’ll be watching. We will ride for a couple of hours and then stop to eat.’

My husband stands up in his stirrups. He bellows ‘À Bedford!’ and the whole stable yard shouts back ‘ve; Bedford!’. They swing the great gates open and my lord leads the way, out through the crowded streets of Paris, where people stare as we go by and cry out for alms or favours, and then through the great north gate, and out into the country towards the narrow seas and England, the unknown shore that I am supposed to call home.

My lord duke and I ride at the head of the procession so we are not troubled with dust, and once we are away from Paris my husband judges that we are safe enough to go before the armed guard so it is just him and me, Woodville and my lady in waiting riding out in the sunshine as if for pleasure. The road winds ahead of us, well travelled by English merchants and soldiers going through the English lands from the English capital of Paris to the English castle of Calais. We stop to dine at the edge of the forest of Chantilly where they have set up pretty tents and have cooked a haunch of venison. I am glad to rest for an hour in the shade of a tree; but I am happy to go on when Woodville orders the guard into the saddle again. When my husband asks me if I would like to complete the journey sitting in my litter drawn by the mules, I tell him no. The afternoon is sunny and warm, and when we enter the green shade of the forest of Chantilly we put our horses into a canter and my mare pulls a little and is eager to gallop. My husband laughs and says, ‘Don’t let her run off with you, Jacquetta.’

I laugh too as his big horse lengthens its great pace to draw neck and neck with Merry, and we go a little faster, and then suddenly, there is a crashing noise and a tree plunges down, all its branches breaking together like a scream, over the road in front of us, and Merry rears in terror and I hear my husband bellow like a trumpet, ‘À Bedford! ’Ware ambush!’ but I am clinging to the mane and nearly out of the saddle, slipping backwards, as Merry plunges to the side, terrified by the noise, and bolts, madly bolts. I haul myself into the saddle, cling to her neck, and bend low as she dashes among the trees, flinging herself to right and left, fleeing where her own frightened senses prompt her. I cannot steer her, I have dropped the reins, I certainly cannot stop her, I can barely cling on, until finally she slows to a trot, and then a walk, and then blows out and stops.

Shakily, I slip from the saddle and collapse to the ground. My jacket has been torn by low-hanging branches, my bonnet knocked from my head and is flapping on its cord, my hair is falling down, tangled with twigs. I give a little sob of fear and shock, and Merry turns to one side and nibbles at a shrub, pulling at it nervously, her ears flicking in all directions.

I take hold of her reins so she cannot dash away again, and I look around me. The forest is cool and dark, absolutely silent but for birdsong from high in the upper branches, and the buzz of insects. There is no noise of marching men, creaking wagons; nothing. I cannot even tell where I have come from, nor how far I am from the road. Merry’s headlong flight seemed to last for a lifetime, but even if they were close at hand I would not know in which direction. Certainly, she didn’t go straight, we twisted and turned through the trees and there is no path for me to retrace.

‘Goddamn,’ I say quietly to myself like an Englishman. ‘Merry, we are completely lost.’

I know that Woodville will ride out to find me, and perhaps he can follow Merry’s little hoof prints. But if the falling tree was an ambush then perhaps he and my husband are fighting for their lives, and nobody yet has had time t think about me. Even worse, if the fight is going against them, then perhaps they will be captured or killed and there will be no-one to search for me at all, and then I am in danger indeed: alone and lost in a hostile country. Either way, I had better save myself if I can.

I know that we were travelling north to Calais, and I can remember enough of the great plan in my husband’s library to know that if I can get myself onto the north road again there will be many villages, churches, and religious houses where I can find hospitality and help. It is a road well travelled and I am certain to meet a party of English people and my title will command their assistance. But only if I can find the road. I look on the ground around us to see if I can trace Merry’s hoof prints and follow them back the way we came, and there is one hoof print in the mud, and then another, a little gap where the leaves cover the ground, but beyond it, the trail picks up again. I take the reins over her head and hold them in my right hand, and say in a voice I try to make sound confident, ‘Well, silly girl, we have to find our way home now,’ and I walk back the way we came with her following behind me, her head bent, as if she is sorry for the trouble she has caused.

We walk for what seems like hours. The tracks give out after a little while, for the floor of the forest is so thick with leaves and twigs that there are no prints to follow. I guess at the way, and we go steadily, but I am more and more afraid that we are wandering lost, perhaps even going round in circles like enchanted knights in a fairy-tale forest. Thinking this, I am hardly surprised when I hear the sound of water and turn towards it and we come to a little stream and a pool. It is almost a fountain, so round and banked with green moss. I have a moment when I think perhaps Melusina will rise from the magical pool to help me, her daughter; but nothing happens so I tie Merry to a tree and wash my face and drink the water, and then I bring her to the stream and she drops her white head and sucks up the water quietly, and drinks deep.

The trees have made a little glade around the stream and a beam of sunlight comes through the thick canopy of leaves. Still holding Merry’s reins, I sit down in the sunshine to rest for a few minutes. In a moment, I think, I will get up and we will put the sun on our left and walk steadily; that will take us north and must take us, surely, to the Paris road where they will, surely, be looking for me. I am so tired, and the sun is so warm, that I lean back against a tree trunk, and close my eyes. In minutes I am fast asleep.

The knight left his horse behind with his comrades, and followed her tracks on foot through the forest, a burning torch held before him, calling her name; calling her name over and over. The forest was unearthly at night; once he caught a glimpse of bright dark eyes and stepped back with an oath and then saw the pale rump of a deer slide away into the shadows. As the moon came up he thought he would see better without the torch, doused it on the ground in the thick leaf mould, and went on, straining his eyes in the silvery half-light. Bushes and trees loomed up at him, darker in the gloom, and without the yellow torchlight he felt he did not want to shout out loudly for her, but instead walked in silence, looking around him all the time, a fear gripping at his heart that he had failed to teach her how to ride, that he had failed to train the horse, that he had failed to tell her what to do in just these circumstances, that he had failed to predict that such a thing might happen: that he had utterly and comprehensively failed her.

At this thougt, so awful to him since he had sworn privately that he would serve and protect her to death, he stopped still and put his hand to a tree trunk to support himself, and bowed his head in shame. She was his lady, he was her knight, and at this, the very first test, he had failed; and now she was somewhere lost in the darkness and he could not find her.

He raised his head, and what he saw made him blink his eyes, what he saw made him rub his eyes, to see without a doubt, without a shadow of a doubt, the glimmering white light of an enchantment, a chimera, and at the heart of it, gleaming, a little white horse, alone in the forest. But as it turned its head and he could see its profile, he saw the silvery horn of a unicorn. The white beast looked at him with its dark gaze, and then slowly walked away, glancing over its shoulder, walking slowly enough for him to follow. Entranced, he stepped quietly behind it, guided by the flickering silvery light, and seeing the little hoof prints that shone in the dead leaves with a white fire, and then faded as he walked by.

He had a sense that he should not try to catch the unicorn; he remembered that all the legends warned that it would turn on him, and attack him if he came too close. Only one being in this world can catch a unicorn, and he had seen the capture in half a dozen tapestries and in a dozen woodcuts in story books, since his youngest boyhood.

The little animal turned off the path and now he could hear the splashing sound of water as they came upon a clearing. He bit his tongue on an exclamation as he saw her, asleep like a nymph, as if she were growing in the wood herself, at the foot of the tree as if she were a bank of flowers, her green velvet dress outspread, her brown bonnet like a pillow under her golden hair, her face as peaceful in sleep as a blossom. He stood waiting, uncertain what he should do, and as he watched, the unicorn went forwards, lay down beside her and placed its long head with the silver horn gently in the lap of the sleeping maid, just as all the legends had always said that it would.

The sound of a footstep wakes me. I know at once that I am lost in the wood in danger and that I have foolishly slept. I wake in a panic, in darkness, and I jump up, and Merry, who has been sleeping, head bowed beside me, wheels around to stare, ears pricked, as the two of us see the figure of a man, a dark outline in the shifting twilight. ‘Who’s there?’ I say, my hand clenching on my whip. ‘Beware! I have a sword!’

‘It’s me: Woodville,’ the squire says and steps closer so I can see him. He looks pale, as if he is as afraid as me. ‘Are you all right, my lady?’

‘My God, my God, Woodville! I am so pleased to see you!’ I run forwards with my hands outstretched and he falls to his knees, takes my hands, and kisses them passionately.

‘My lady,’ he whispers. ‘My lady. Thank God I find you safe! Are you unhurt?’

‘Yes, yes, I was just resting, I fell asleep, I had been walking for so long, trying to find my way back to the road, but then I was so foolish – I sat down and I fell asleep . . . ’

He stumbles to his feet. ‘It’s not far, I have been looking for you all evening, but it’s not far.’

‘Is it late now?’

‘No more than eleven. We’all looking for you. The duke is mad with worry. I was trying to follow your tracks . . . but I would never have found you but for . . . ’

‘And is my lord duke safe? Was it an ambush?’

He shakes his head. ‘Some fool of a peasant felling a tree brought down another across the road. No-one hurt; just bad luck that we were there at the time. We were all only afraid for you. Did you fall?’

‘No, she ran off with me, but she didn’t throw me. She’s a good horse, she only ran because she was afraid and then she stopped.’

He hesitates. ‘She led me to you,’ he says. ‘It is quite a miracle. I saw her in the woods and she brought me to you.’

I hold up the reins I had tied to my wrist. ‘I didn’t let her go.’

‘You had her tethered?’

He gazes around the little clearing, at the silver moonlight on the water, at the shadowy darkness of the trees, as if he is looking for something.

‘Yes, of course. But I took her saddle off as you showed me.’

‘I saw her,’ he says flatly. ‘She was loose in the woods.’

‘She has been here all the time. I held her reins.’

He shakes his head as if to clear his bewilderment. ‘That was well done. I will put her saddle on her, and I can lead you to the road.’ He picks up the beautifully worked saddle and slides it on Merry’s back. He tightens the girth then he turns to lift me up. For a moment he hesitates, with his hands on my waist. It is as if our bodies have come together, almost without our volition: my head to his shoulder, his hands on my waist. It is as if we are drawn, one to another, like the planets on their wires in my lord’s library. Slowly, I realise that I am filled with an emotion I have never felt before, slowly I realise that this is a longing. I turn my face up towards him, and his darkened eyes look down at me, his hands warm, his face almost puzzled as he feels the desire which is slowly pulsing in me. We stand like that together, for a long time. Then, without a word, he lifts me up into the saddle, brushes down my gown, hands me my hat, and leads Merry through the wood towards the road.