It was time to add a little light-hearted frivolity to preserve the tone. Would not Princess Joan agree? I was certain of it.

The minstrels rested, the dancers drew breath, the mummers removed their masks, and I approached Henry with my youngest son of four years bearing a lidded basket, my eldest in well-drilled attendance.

‘A gift for you, my lord, from the Duke and Duchess of Exeter.’ My little son John had been well-trained. I managed not to meet husband John’s caustic eye. He knew nothing of this.

Henry, feigning ignorance of the tensions around him, laughed as the basket rocked in my son’s hold. ‘Does it bite?’

‘Only …’ My son hesitated. ‘Only rats, sir.’

Henry lifted the lid and lifted out a handsome black kitten. A sign of good luck. I knew it would catch Henry’s interest. Did he not wear a brooch bearing the words sanz mal penser? His superstition even as a child had been a matter of mirth; a tunic that brought him good fortune in a practice joust had to be stripped from him after three months of constant wear.

‘He is a symbol of prosperity, for you and the kingdom,’ John’s son and heir Richard added with excellent solemnity since this was beyond his brother. ‘He will rid your house of vermin, my lord. His father is a good mouser in our kitchens.’

‘My thanks to the most gracious Duke and Duchess of Exeter.’ There was much laughter as Henry handed the little creature to his eldest son, Hal, who restored it to its basket when it began to squirm and mew. It was a good atmosphere. A little family moment of intimacy and pleasure, as I preened myself on my success, breathing out slowly in relief, my hand stilling the child in my belly. ‘Does he have a name?’

Richard shook his head.

‘He is for you to name, my lord, to mark this occasion.’

‘May I suggest Deceit?’

There was the hiss of an intake of breath from around me, and my heart thudded as heavily as my unborn child’s fist, for at my shoulder was the gracious Duke of Exeter himself, incomparable host, all semblance of graciousness wiped away. The whole room hung on the next exchange of words.

‘Perhaps you recall the occasion,’ my husband addressed my brother. ‘When Richard received a set of loaded dice from the mummers who entertained him in the days before the Crown of England came to him. It was to allow him to win, which he did. And they cheered his victory, travesty as it was, because they looked forward to the golden age when he would rule. But the dice did not bring Richard good luck, did they? Just as I doubt the cat will rid you of all your vermin.’

I listened with horror, my face paling as it became worse.

‘Do you mean these?’ Henry asked. Like a gifted magician, he removed them from his purse. An eye-catching pair of dice.

‘So you took his dice as well as his crown?’

‘I removed a disease from England.’

‘Which could be cured, with careful handling.’

‘Which needed to be wiped out.’

‘And will you wipe it out?’

‘I am attempting to find a painless remedy.’

‘Painless for whom?’

Upon which Henry made his departure in high dignity and a black mood. He did not take the cat.

‘Could you not try?’ I faced John as we were left to survey the debris of the ruined evening.

‘To do what? Ingratiate myself with the man who would place the crown of England on his own head? You are so busy welcoming your brother that you do not even see my dilemma.’

‘But I do …’

‘I beg to differ.’

‘There is no compromise in you.’

John left me, in a mood as black as Henry’s.

The cat remained with me, in my kitchens, presumably named by my cook. What would I have named it? Despair?

I did not expect John to come to my chamber that night—why break the habit of all the previous nights? —nor did he. I waited and then could wait no more so wrapped my cumbersome state in a robe and went to his rooms.

He was asleep, head burrowed in the pillows.

It was in my mind to slide in beside him, as effectively as I could slide anywhere, and hug him back into a warm consciousness that might heal his wounds, but what use? Nothing I did could lessen his pain. It was his choice to be apart from me, and so I did not wake him, nor did I touch the shock of hair even though the urge to do so was strong. I did not know what to say to him that I had not already said.

By next morning he was gone, leaving only the hard words we had shared to reverberate in my mind, refusing to be laid to rest. They shattered the quiet rooms of Pultney House, made even quieter from John’s absence. Where was the love that had brought us together, that had given us the strength to defy convention and demand that we be man and wife? An uncomfortable worm of guilt curled in my belly. John had accused me of selfish disregard. That Henry’s achievements overwhelmed any thought I should have for John’s intolerable position. Was it true? Was I so selfish?

I did not think so.

But still the worm churned and destroyed as the day of Henry’s coronation drew closer.

Why could John not come home so that we might talk?

Had I driven him away?

So relieved had I been at Henry’s acceptance by those who could have stopped him, I had presumed that John would follow the same course. But Richard was John’s brother, for good or ill. Now all I could do was wait.

My bed remained cold and empty.

‘Is my father here?’ Richard, my son, John’s heir. To witness this most momentous of occasions.

‘I don’t know.’

I strained to look over the heads of the lords of the realm. There were some seats vacant. That was my first thought, and my fear. One of them would most certainly be that of the Duke of Exeter.

In the Great Hall in the Palace at Westminster, the lords were gathering, all wishing to be part of the proceedings, and I would be there, with John’s heir, to bear witness, wherever John might be. No one would be able to accuse my son or me of disloyalty to the new King. As a woman I was not invited. As the new King’s sister, no one would deny me the right to be there. Nor in the seat I had commandeered at the front. Probably the state of my pregnancy made the stewards unwilling to dispute the fact with me. No one, least of all me, wished this child to be born in the middle of the ceremony.

‘I can see one empty chair,’ Richard said.

‘That is the one occupied by the Duke of Lancaster. It is your uncle’s now. It has never been occupied since the death of your grandfather.’

‘The throne is empty too.’

The throne, draped in cloth of gold. Vacant. For we had no king. Not yet. King Richard, stripped of the right, incarcerated, had willingly resigned his powers, if anyone believed in such an unlikely eventuality. And because there was no king, the writs for a parliament had been withdrawn. This was no parliament but an assembly to ratify Richard’s deposition and confirm the inheritance of his successor.

But where was John? If John absented himself on this most important of days, his estrangement with Henry would be complete and beyond my healing.

‘What will happen if Father does not join Henry?’ Richard whispered. A percipient boy, now twelve years old. He had heard much of what was talked of at home.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will my uncle Henry execute him?’

‘No. They will talk about it and come to an acceptable conclusion.’

Lies, all lies—but I could not put fear in my son’s eyes, the fear that kept me from sleep.

‘What will happen to my uncle Richard?’

‘I expect Henry will allow him to live comfortably in some castle away from London.’

‘It would be dangerous to let Richard live. It would be better if he were dead. Better for Henry.’

It was as if a hand tightened around my throat and my belly lurched at these words that I had heard before, yet never expressed with such innocence.

‘Is that what you would do?’

‘I might if I were King. My uncle Henry might.’

‘Then we must talk him out of it, mustn’t we.’

‘But he will be King. He will have the power.’

So I knew. I made a clumsy turn in my seat to look at my son’s solemn face. He grew more like John every day but had a sweetness of temper that was increasingly fleeting in John. Even my son saw the political demands this situation could make.

The doors of the Hall were flung back. Here they were.

‘What if …?’

‘Hush, now.’

I leaned forward to see between the ranks.

Two mitred heads as two archbishops came in solemn procession. So Henry had the blessing of the church. He would be relieved.

‘Look …’ Richard nudged me with a sharp elbow. ‘He’s brought them.’

Slight figures, pacing solemnly with formal dignity. Henry had brought his four sons to make their own claim for the future. Henry and Lionel, John and Humphrey, ranging from fourteen to ten years. Henry had an eye to the impression his family would make on a country starved of heirs in the last years.

‘I wish I could be with my father. I wish I could walk at his side as his heir.’

Richard’s eyes were glowing. He really believed that John would take his place in the procession. Such youthful hope that I had not the heart to destroy.

I only pray your father is here at all.

I could not say it, but held Richard’s hand tightly. His father might be a foresworn traitor before the end of the day if he did not see fit to fill his vacant seat.

A man walking alone. At first I could not see but then because of his burden I knew. It was Sir Thomas Erpingham carrying a great jewelled sword. The Lancaster Sword, Henry’s new sword of state. The one Henry had carried at Ravenspur in the campaign that brought him to victory. A sign of power.