COVENTRY, SPRING 1460

The court is in Coventry, readying for war, when I arrive in England and take the queen the news that our enemies in Calais are holding my husband and son, and that they are certain to invade this year.

‘Jacquetta, I am so sorry,’ Margaret says to me. ‘I had no idea. I would never have put you in danger like that . . . when they told me that you had been captured I was beside myself.’ She glances around and whispers to me, ‘I wrote to Pierre de Brézé, the Seneschal of Normandy, and asked him to take Calais and rescue you. You know what would happen to me if anyone found out I am writing to him. But you are this important to me.’

‘I was never in any great danger,’ I say. ‘But the rebel lords taunted Richard and Anthony and I think if they could have killed them in a brawl they would have done so.’

‘I hate them,’ she says simply. ‘Warwick and his father, York and his son. They are my enemies till death. You know the rumours they are spreading now?’

I nod. They have spoken slander against this queen from the moment she arrived in England.

‘They are openly saying that my son is a bastard, that the king knew nothing about his birth and christening and also – nothing about his conception. They think to disinherit him with slander, since they cannot hurt him by war.’

‘Do you have news of the Yorkist lords?’

‘They have met,’ she says shortly. ‘I have spies at York’s little court in Ireland and they tell me. Warwick went to meet the Duke of York in his castle in Ireland. We know that they met, we can guess they plan to invade. We cannot know when for sure.’

‘And are you ready for an invasion?’

She nods grimly. ‘The king has been ill again – oh, not very ill – but he has lost interest in everything but praying. He has been at prayer for all of this week and sleeping, sometimes as much as sixteen hours a day . . .’ She breaks off. ‘I never know if he is here or if he has gone. But, at any rate, I am ready, I am ready for anything. I have the troops, I have the lords, I have the country on my side – all but the perfidious people of Kent and the guttersnipes of London.’

‘When, do you think?’ I do not really need to ask. All campaigns start in the summer season. It cannot be long before they bring the news that York is on the march from Ireland, and Warwick has set sail from Calais.

‘I’ll go and see my children,’ I say. ‘They will be anxious about their father and their brother.’

‘And then come back,’ she says. ‘I need you with me, Jacquetta.’