Then the messengers fail to arrive, and nobody comes to tell us what is happening. We go out to the little physic garden of the priory and we can hear the terrible noise of the cannon, which sounds just like summer-day thunder; but there is no way of knowing whether it is our gunners, getting the white rose in their sights, mowing them down, or whether Edward has managed to bring his own artillery, even on a forced march, even at that speed, and they are shooting uphill at us.

‘The duke is an experienced soldier,’ the queen says. ‘He will know what to do.’

Neither of us remark that my father was far more experienced, and won almost all his battles, but his pupil Edward defeated him. Suddenly we hear the rattle of a galloping horse and a rider with the Beaufort colours approaches the stable yard. We run to the open gate. He does not even dismount, he does not even enter the yard, but his horse wheels and rears on the road, sweat-stained and labouring for breath. ‘My lord said I was to tell you, if ever I thought the battle lost. So I have come. You should get away.’

Margaret runs forwards and would grab his reins but he puts his whip-hand down to prevent her from touching him. ‘I won’t stay. I promised him I would warn you and this I have done. I’m off.’

‘The duke?’

‘Run away!’

The shock makes her shrill. ‘The Duke of Somerset!’

‘That’s him. Run like a deer.’

‘Where is Edward?’

‘Coming!’ is all he shouts, and he wheels his horse and gallops off down the road, the sparks flying from the horseshoes.

‘We must go,’ Margaret says flatly.

I am overwhelmed by the sudden defeat. ‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t we wait for Prince Edward? What if that man was mistaken?’

‘Oh yes,’ she says bitterly. ‘I am sure. This is not the first time I have run from a battlefield and perhaps it will not be the last. Get them to bring our horses. I will get my things.’

She dashes into the house and I run to the stable and shake the old groom and tell him to bring my horse and the queen’s horse at once.

‘What’s the matter?’ His gummy old smile breaks his wrinkled face into a thousand cracks. ‘Battle too hot for you, little lady? Want to get away now? I thought you were waiting to ride out in triumph?’

‘Get the horses out,’ is all I say.

I hammer on the door of the hayloft for the two men who are supposed to guard us and order them to get ready to leave at once. I run inside to fetch my cloak and my riding gloves. I hop on the wooden floor as I cram my feet into my riding boots. Then I scramble out into the yard, one glove on, one in my hand, but as I get to the yard and shout for them to bring my horse to the mounting block, there is a thunder of hooves outside and the gate to the yard is suddenly filled with fifty horses and I can see, amid them all, the black curly head of Richard Duke of Gloucester, my childhood friend, the ward of my father, and the brother of Edward of York. Beside him, I recognise at once, is Robert Brackenbury, his childhood friend, still faithful. Our two men have handed over their pikes, they are stripping off their jackets as if they are glad to be rid of the insignia of the red rose and my husband, Prince Edward’s, badge of the swan.

Richard rides his great grey horse right up to me, as I stand, like a martyr, on the mounting block, as if he thinks I might mount behind him and ride pillion. His young face is grim. ‘Lady Anne,’ he says.

‘Princess,’ I say weakly. ‘I am Princess Anne.’

He takes off his hat to me. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects me.

For a moment his meaning does not sink in. Then I sway and he puts out a hand to steady me so that I do not fall. ‘My husband is dead?’

He nods.

I look around for his mother. She is inside the priory still. She does not know. The horror of this is quite beyond me. I think she will die when she hears this news. I don’t know how I am going to tell her.

‘At whose hands?’

‘He died during the battle. He had a soldier’s death: honourable. Now I am taking you into safe-keeping, according to the orders of my brother King Edward.’

I draw close to his horse, I put one pleading hand on his horse’s mane and I look into his kind brown eyes. ‘Richard, for the love of God, for my father’s love for you, let me go to my mother. I think she is in an abbey somewhere called Beaulieu. And my father is dead. Let me go to my mother. There is my horse, let me mount it and go.’

His young face is stern; it is as if we are strangers, as if he had never seen me in his life before. ‘I am sorry, Dowager Princess. My orders are clear. To take you and Her Grace Margaret of Anjou into my keeping.’

‘And what of my husband?’

‘He’ll be buried here. With the hundreds, thousands of others.’

‘I will have to tell his mother,’ I say. ‘Can I tell her how he died?’

His sideways glance, as if he is too afraid to meet my eyes, confirms my suspicions. That was how he used to look when he was caught out in some misdemeanour in the schoolroom. ‘Richard!’ I accuse him.

‘He died during the battle,’ he says.

‘Did you kill him? Or Edward? Or George?’

The York boys stick together once more. ‘He died in battle,’ Richard repeats. ‘A soldier’s death. His mother may be proud of his courage. You too. And now I must bid you get on your horse and come with me.’

The door of the priory opens and he looks up and sees her as she comes slowly down the steps in the sunshine. She has her travelling cape over her arm and a little satchel on her back; they caught us only by moments, we had nearly got away. She sees the fifty cavalrymen, and looks from Richard’s grim face to my shocked one, and she knows at once the news that he brings. Her hand goes out to the stone doorway to steady herself, and she holds the arch at the height where she used to hold her son’s little hand when she was Queen of England and he was her precious only boy.

‘My son, His Grace the Prince of Wales?’ she asks, clinging to the title now that she will never hold the young man again.

‘I regret to tell you that Edward of Westminster died in the battle,’ Richard says. ‘My brother, the King of England, King Edward, has won. Your commanders are dead, or surrendering, or fled. I am here to take you to London.’

I jump down from the mounting block and go towards her with my hands out to hold her; but she does not even see me. Her pale blue eyes are stony. ‘I refuse to come with you, this is hallowed ground, I am in sanctuary. I am a Princess of France, and Queen of England, you cannot lay hands on me. My person is sacred. The dowager princess is in my keeping. We will stay here until Edward comes to parley, and I will speak to none other but him.’

Richard is eighteen years old, born nothing more than the youngest son of a duke. She was born a princess and has fought half her life as a queen. She faces him down, and he drops his gaze. She turns from him and snaps her fingers at me to follow her inside the nunnery. I obey, jumping down from the mounting block and falling in behind her, aware of his eyes on my back, wondering if we will get away with this magnificent gamble of prestige against power.

‘Your Grace, you will get on your horse and ride with us to London or I will have you bound and gagged and thrown in a litter,’ he says quietly.

She rounds on him. ‘I claim sanctuary! You heard me! I am safe here.’

His face is grim. ‘We are dragging them out of the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey and slitting their throats in the churchyard,’ he says without raising his voice, without a trace of shame in his voice. ‘We don’t recognise sanctuary for traitors. We have changed the rules. You should thank God that Edward wants to show you as part of his triumph in London or you would be down in the dirt with them with your head staved in by an axe.’

In a second she has changed her tactics and she is off the steps and at his side, her hand on his rein. The face she turns up to him is warm and inviting. ‘You are young,’ she says gently. ‘You are a good soldier, a good general. You will be nothing while Edward lives, you will always be a younger son, after Edward, after George. Come to me and I will name you as my heir, get us away from here and you shall marry Her Grace Anne, the princess dowager, I shall name you Prince of Wales, my heir, and you can have Anne. Put me back on the throne and I will give you the Neville fortune and then make you the next king after my husband.’

He laughs out loud, his laugh warm and genuine, the only healthy noise in the stable yard today. He shakes his young curly head in amusement at her persistence, at her refusal to give up. ‘Your Grace, I am a boy of York. My motto is loyauté me lie. I am faithful to my brother as to my own self. I love nothing in the world more than honour. And I would as soon put a wolf on the throne of England as you.’

She is still for a moment. In his proud young voice she hears her defeat. Now, she knows she is beaten. She drops her hands from his rein, she turns away. I see her put her hand to her heart and know that she is thinking of the son she adored, whose inheritance she just threw on the ground for a final last desperate cast.

Richard looks over her head to me. ‘And the princess dowager and I will make our own arrangements,’ he says surprisingly.

She takes hours to pack her things. I know she has been kneeling before her crucifix in speechless weeping for her son; she begs the nuns to say mass for him, to get hold of his body if they can and bathe it and wrap it and bury him with the honours of a prince. She orders me to ask Richard for his body, but he says that the prince will be buried in Tewkesbury Abbey when the soldiers have scrubbed the blood from the chancel steps and the church has been re-consecrated. The Yorks have fouled a holy place with the blood of Lancastrian martyrs and my young husband will lie beneath bloodstained stones. Oddly, this is one of my family churches, endowed by the Nevilles for generations, our family resting place. So, as it happens, my young husband will lie near my ancestors, in a place of honour below our chancel steps, and his memorial stone will be bright with sun shining through the stained glass of our windows.