PARIS, FRANCE, DECEMBER 1434–
JANUARY 1435

Woodville does not get his wish that I should see Grafton, though we stay in England for a year, and my lord never gets his wish for an adequate army to serve in France, nor – though he takes power and rules England – can he bring the king’s council or parliament into proper order. We cannot stay in England for the city of Paris sends for my lord duke and says that the people there are besieged by robbers, mutinous soldiers and beggars, and starving for lack of supplies.

‘He won’t refuse them,’ Woodville warns me. ‘We will have to go back to Paris.’

The seas are rough for the crossing and when we arrive in Calais the garrison is so dispirited that my lord commands Woodville to stay there, raise their spirits, and prepare the soldiers for an attack on the French as soon as the weather allows. Then my lord and I prepare to press on down the muddy roads for Paris.

Woodville stands in the archway of the great gate to bid us farewell. He comes beside me and, without thinking, checks the tightness of the girth on my horse, as he always does. ‘How shall I manage without you?’ I ask.

His face is grim. ‘I shall think of you,’ he says. His voice is low and he does not meet my eyes. ‘God knows, I shall think of you every day.’

He turns from me and goes to my lord duke. They clasp hands and then my lord leans down from his horse and hugs his squire. ‘God bless, lad, hold this for me and come when I send for you.’

‘Always,’ Woodville says briefly, and then my lord raises his hand and we clatter out over the drawbridge and I realise I don’t know when I will see him again, and that I have not said goodbye, nor thanked him for his care of me, nor told him – nor told him . . . I shake my head. There is nothing that the Duchess of Bedford should tell her husband’s squire, and there is no reason for me to have tears blurring my sight of the flat road in the flat lands ahead.

This time we ride in the centre of the guard. The countryside is lawless and no-one knows whether a French troop might be riding through, destroying everything they find. We ride at a steady canter, my lord grim-faced, exhausted by the journey, bracing himself for trouble.

It is miserable in the city. We try to keep Christmas in the Hôtel de Bourbon but the cooks are in despair of getting good meat and vegetables. Every day messengers come in from the English lands in France reporting uprisings in distant villages where the people have sworn that they will not endure the rule of the English for another moment. It is little comfort that we hear also that the Armagnac king is also troubled with rebellions. In truth the whole land of France is sick of war and soldiers and is crying a plague on both our houses.

In the new year my lord duke tells me shortly that we are leaving Paris, and I know him well enough now not to question his plans when he looks so angry and so weary at the same time.

‘Can you tell me if our luck will turn?’ he asks sourly. ‘Just that?’

I shake my head. In truth, I think he has bad luck at his heels and sorrow at hs shoulder.

‘You look like a widow,’ he says sharply. ‘Smile, Jacquetta.’

I smile at him and I don’t say that sometimes I feel like a widow, too.