I had been reinstated. Perhaps he was impressed that I had not fallen to the floor in a faint or screamed my agony.

‘John …’ I whispered.

‘Go home, lady. Go home to your children. Remember him when he was alive. If you choose to remember a traitor at all.’

‘He was no traitor to me.’

My love. My dear love. How could I not stop you before it came to this?

Stony faced, I looked up at the spikes where the heads of criminals and miscreants were exposed. I would not weep, even though birds were already hovering in anticipation, coming to land on the parapet.

‘I will fight for your title, your inheritance,’ I repeated my previous oath even more fervently. ‘I will fight for your lands. I swear that I will. I will give Henry no peace until he restores what is the rightful inheritance of our children.’

Drawing up my hood, I wrapped the cloak tightly around me as if to curb my shivering that was nothing to do with the cold, then I turned away. I could not watch this final horror. Yet how could I leave when there, at the end of the bridge, was a face I knew, a man who had come to watch the final disposition of the traitor’s head. And to gloat.

Constance’s hand remained hard on my arm.

‘Where now?’ Constance asked.

And I was brought back to my senses.

‘To the King, of course.’

To Henry, because he was my only hope.

I had not seen Henry since the day the air had snapped and sparked with our temper and I had marched from his presence, vowing never to see him, never to speak with him again. I would never humble myself before him, arrogant King that he had become, and beg for anything ever again.

How futile some vows, how empty. After what I had just seen on the bridge in the misty half-light, and knowing what I had left behind there, I strode into Henry’s presence as if I had seen him only yesterday. He might refuse me. As King he had that power. But I would not make it easy for him. I was his sister and he had a duty to hear me. All I had left in the world was my Plantagenet pride, but that was all I needed in my demand for justice. I could not save John’s life but I could argue the case for fairness and rightness, and because every feeling in my body seemed to be dead, every argument would be from my head, not from my heart. I did not think that I would ever weep or laugh again. There would be no emotion in this meeting.

And that would be a good thing. There had been far too much emotion between us.

As I stalked through the rooms and anterooms towards one of his audience chambers at Westminster, pre-empting any announcement by his chamberlain who fussed at my side, my path crossed that of Edward of Rutland, coming in the opposite direction.

‘What are you doing here?’ I snapped. The last time I had seen him was in close company with John, heads together in a conspiracy. Or perhaps he had been with Henry when I had been told of John’s capture. Had not John asked about him? It did not matter. Here he was, silk-clad and beautiful.

‘I could ask you the same thing, Cousin,’ he replied, but did not stop to hear my answer. ‘The King is in a particularly good mood today.’ His voice died away with a light chuckle. ‘He’s received good news of your late husband …’

I had no time for Edward and his opinions, for there was Henry, turning his head in expectation as I entered. His whole body stilled. It was not me he was waiting for, as was made clear when he turned fully to face me, away from his magnates and bishops, with an expression that might have been carved from stone.

‘Elizabeth.’

‘My lord.’

I might be excruciatingly formal but did not curtsy. Nor, even though we were within the space of a hand-clasp, did we make the sign of greeting. There was no familial welcome in Henry’s eye. But then, neither was there in mine.

‘You have been absent from my court,’ he said, almost an accusation. ‘What brings you here now?’

Did I want this conversation in such a public arena? It did not matter. Nothing mattered but the one terrible image that filled my mind.

‘John Holland is dead,’ I said.

‘So I am informed.’

Henry showed no satisfaction, no pleasure in it. But it was done and by his orders.

‘Will you receive me, the widow of a traitor?’

I was in no mood to be conciliatory. The sight I had left on London Bridge had destroyed any finer sisterly feelings, for there, at the end, out of the mist, had been a face I detested, a man I would have hounded to his death for what he had done, seated arrogantly on his magnificent horse, glorying in the culmination of his deliberate campaign. For a long moment we had stared at each other, before, rejecting me as a woman of no importance, he directed his attention to the matter in hand.

It had taken Constance’s hand on my arm to drag me away.

‘I will receive you,’ Henry replied.

His tone was light but I thought he had aged. I supposed that plots against a man’s life could do that. Perhaps I, too, showed signs of the passing of the years. Grief and anger could leave their mark.

‘What is it that you want of me?’ Cool, watchful, there was no anger in him today. I supposed that he could afford to be even-tempered for the rebellion was over. ‘If I can heal the rift between us, I will. I have no wish to be estranged from you, Elizabeth.’

And so, needing no further invitation to air my grievances, I began, like a man of law.

‘My husband’s lands are declared forfeit.’

‘As they must be.’

‘My children are disinherited.’

‘It is a risk that Holland took.’

Nothing that I did not expect.

‘So you would have my children landless as well as fatherless. I am here to ask, as your sister, for restitution.’

‘I have not changed my mind, Elizabeth. Treason has its penalties.’

‘And I ask you to reconsider, Henry. I ask for royal clemency.’

How many times had I been forced to put aside my pride and petition for John? My throat was raw with it, my belly sore. But this would be the final time and I had vowed that I would.

‘I want you to recognise the man who was once the most loyal of friends to you and our father. I want you to recognise the man who once saved you from certain death, and restore his titles and inheritance. I beg that you, for all that you have been to each other in the past, will restore his titles and inheritance.’

‘No, Elizabeth.’

‘You forgave John Ferrour, the soldier who rescued you, even though he was part of the Earls’ Revolt. You released him and pardoned him because he shut you in a cupboard in the Tower of London and saved your life.’ I saw Henry blink, that I should know of it. ‘Why can you not restore the inheritance of the man who gave Ferrour the order?’

But Henry had his wits about him. ‘Because Ferrour was a soldier who followed orders. Holland was the instigator of the plot to cut me down. There’s a vast difference, Elizabeth.’

I read the implacable will, the pride in his own inheritance, the sheer strength of which I had always been aware, so that it was as if I faced my father again, with all the arrogance of a royal prince on his shoulders, braced against me. Even his eyes were hard, like agates, as the Duke’s had been when his will was crossed. Today Henry was very much Duke of Lancaster, and I saw that my plea fell on stony ground. Perhaps he was even more King of England in his cold enforcement of justice.

And then the door of the audience chamber opened, the chamberlain approaching, and with him the man I had last seen on the bridge, who now walked to bow to Henry with the sleek smile of a snake in anticipation of a reward for a job well done. It was he who had brought John’s head to London. It was this man for whom Henry was waiting. Here was my enemy at Henry’s side with all the confidence of a chosen counsellor, as I knew he would be. Thomas FitzAlan, friend to Henry, who would soon be restored as Earl of Arundel.

‘It is done, sire,’ he said. ‘The traitor Holland is dead.’

Henry’s reply was brusque. ‘I am aware. You did not receive my orders?’

‘Sire?’ FitzAlan’s smile faded, his expression becoming a perfection of misunderstanding.

‘That Holland was to be escorted here to London, to the Tower.’

All my attention was grasped by this one statement. FitzAlan was unperturbed.

‘No, sire. The Countess and I received no such direction.’

Henry’s lips thinned. ‘Then I must thank you for the speed with which you dispatched an enemy of the peace of my kingdom.’

‘Indeed, Sire. The mob was most insistent that death was the only penalty.’

‘And I don’t suppose you worked over-hard to change their mind.’

‘No, Sire.’

Henry managed a regal smile. ‘I will speak with you later. You will receive your reward.’ And then to me, with no smile. ‘We will talk privately.’

‘We certainly will!’ I managed as he gripped my arm and drew me away from FitzAlan and the curious magnates and clerics. I wrenched away from him, yet thumped my fist against his shoulder. So much for lack of emotion. ‘You changed your mind.’

‘Yes.’ An infinitesimal pause. ‘And no.’

‘Why?’

‘Because my damned sister looked at me as if I were vermin beneath her feet.’ And here was emotion too. Henry’s eyes were alight with it, a strange mix of irritation and compassion. ‘I would have imprisoned him for you. I might have regretted it, to leave him alive to plot again, but I sent the order. Does that satisfy you?’

‘Oh, Hal!’ He had cared after all, but doubts still swam in my mind and I could not order my thoughts into line. ‘Do you believe FitzAlan? That your orders did not reach Pleshey in time?’

‘No. He took it upon himself.’