‘For which I blame myself with every breath I take,’ John growled, sinking back into a chair, the sudden expression of grief in his face so tangible that I had to resist moving to stand behind him, my hand on his shoulder. Then I did not resist at all. How could I? The muscles in his shoulder taut, John looked up at me with a glimmer of a smile but the regret was still there in his words and I knew the guilt would always lie on his heart. ‘I should have done something to stop it and instead I turned my back and hoped it was just Richard demanding attention, as he does. And I was wrong. My brother paid with his life for my inaction. You are not telling me anything I do not know, Henry.’

It had been a time of simmering danger, Richard claiming that Gloucester was plotting against him and begging John for advice. John had tried to pour oil on troubled waters with stern words: Gloucester would never harm either the King or the little Queen Isabella of France. But Richard had had the suspected plotters, Gloucester together with Warwick and Arundel, arrested, and his uncle of Gloucester done to death, smothered in his bed in Calais.

‘Do you believe the evidence that Gloucester was plotting against Richard?’ Henry demanded, taking a seat opposite.

‘No,’ John responded softly. ‘I think it a ruse by Richard to be avenged. Because my brother Gloucester was one of the Lords Appellant.’

Henry raised his eyes to John’s face.

‘So was I one of the Lords Appellant.’

And I felt the muscle in John’s shoulder tense further, and in that tension, which he made no attempt to disguise, I learned the depth of John’s fear for Henry, for all of us.

‘I know you were involved. Why do you think I played the diplomat—or some would say the coward—and made little comment on Gloucester’s death? Why do you think I tread carefully now? Every day I await the next step in Richard’s plotting to rid himself of every man in the kingdom who has the blood and the strength to challenge his power. And most of all I fear that Richard has his next arrow trained on you, my son. He’ll never forgive you for what happened at Radcot Bridge.’

This was Richard, who smiled on the Beauforts, who granted land and an Earldom to my son, John, approved a new and most valuable jointure for me for the term of my life so that I should never suffer hardship, who gave office to Henry as Chancellor of Oxford and recognition to Thomas who was retained for life by the King himself. All of this with one generous hand, whilst vicious and spiteful retribution was enacted with the other. Richard, God’s anointed King, who abandoned all compassion, all loyalty, out of revenge on those who had dared to stand against him. Those who had rid him of his fawning and much-loved favourite Robert de Vere in the hope of restoring good government to England.

And one of these Lords Appellant, appealing to Richard to restore good government, taking a stand against their King, which some might construe as treason, was Henry who had joined up with the lords of York, Nottingham, Warwick and Arundel to push the issue by raising an army. At Radcot Bridge de Vere had been defeated and forced into banishment.

Richard’s wrath was stirred to a new level, and so was his desire for revenge. Richard declared war against Henry, and against John, the one man in the kingdom who had guided and guarded him from childhood.

Now John’s words were like the tolling of a bell to signal a death as his hands fisted to match those of his son. When John moved under my hand, I found that my fingers were digging hard into the cloth, into the flesh beneath. I flexed them, but I would not break the contact. All we had built together, of love and family, was suddenly in danger from Richard’s revenge. Even our lives.

‘You are in no danger,’ John said, looking up at me. ‘I’ll not let you come to harm.’

My own response leaped into life.

But how can I save you?

How would I live out my days if I lost him now, after so little time together? My heart thudded hard. John might hope for Richard’s good sense, but the conviction in his earlier words did not balance against the worry I now read in his eyes. We were threatened with death on the road, to all intents at the hands of some enterprising footpads, in truth paid for by the King.

‘I am so sorry…’ was all I managed at John’s ruthlessly painful evaluation of his family’s veracity. Of Plantagenet unity and loyalty.

His shoulder lifted under my renewed grip. ‘It is a burden I must bear.’

‘That we must bear…’

Which prompted him to close his hand over mine and press it hard against his chest where his heart beat with a steady rhythm. His gaze was wide and level, calming my rising panic. When he smiled with complete understanding, I found myself responding, the terror in my heart less fierce. We had an understanding, a link that would hold firm under all tribulation. Nothing would destroy that. I would not allow it.

But a murderer’s dagger might—

Henry interrupted my thoughts, a little gesture of impatience. ‘I came here for your advice. What do I do, my lord?’ In his anxiety he became increasingly formal.

John stood. ‘We call his bluff. We tell the King what we have heard, and deny that there could be any possible truth in it. We convince the King that we have utmost trust in his love for his family. We will not, God forgive us, make mention of my brother Gloucester.’

He looked down at me. ‘Do you agree?’

He so rarely asked my opinion. It was a mark of his concern, despite his reassurance.

‘Yes, I do,’ I responded. I could think of no other way forward out of this lethal mire.

‘Do you travel to London? Or shall I?’ Henry was already on his way to the door with energetic strides. Since Mary’s death I thought he had aged, no longer the young boy I had known. Still young in years, his capacity for clear thought and prompt action was impressive.

John’s smile was wry. ‘I think the old lion has had his day. You go, my son. I have confidence in you.’ They embraced. ‘But keep your temper.’

So Henry went to Windsor to disrupt the so-called plot, John brooded behind a wall of silence and I cursed Richard to the fires of hell for his destruction of our happiness.

‘Take care,’ I whispered in Henry’s ear as he prepared to mount. ‘Come back to us.’

For I knew that if his beloved son came to harm, John would be broken. I would have to be strong for both of us.

I would never forgive Richard. I would despise Richard until the day of my death.

September 1398: Gosford Green, Coventry

Holy Mother, I prayed silently, my palm hard around the coral beads restored to my belt. Cast your divine protection over these two men. If Henry dies on this field, it will surely break John’s heart. I cannot bear the anguish for him. And my own…

If I was to act, it must be now.

Seated on the dais, clad in the white and blue of the heavy damask gown I had worn for our mantle ceremony when we had rejoiced in the favour of God and the lords of England, I absorbed the magnificent scene that Richard had created for this day. No one could fault his imagination, or his sense of the dramatic. Or the quality of mischief that rendered him dangerous to the existence of Henry of Derby.

I was close enough to touch Richard’s ermined robe, if I stretched out my arm, and wondered momentarily if he could sense my thoughts. What John’s were I had no idea behind his harsh features. Richard’s were pure malevolence disguised by the benign smile.

I tensed my muscles to obey me.

We were hemmed in by flags and pennons, stamped with the heraldic devices of the aristocracy of England, all overlaid with a wealth of royal symbolism and Richard’s own smoothly smug, gold-coroneted white hart. The canopy over my head fluttered with Plantagenet leopards and Valois fleur-de-lis, casting mottled shadows over my veils and on those of Richard’s French child bride, resplendent in a gown she was clearly delighted in. Her little hands smoothed her velvet skirts in pleasure. Mine clenched, white-knuckled, until I remembered and stretched them, hot palmed against the stiffly embroidered cloth.

At my side, between me and Richard, was John, darkly formal, bejewelled yet austere, every inch King’s counsellor, royal uncle and Duke of Lancaster and Aquitaine. He would not dishonour his dignity or his name by a show of emotion on this terrible day. We were here to witness the quality of royal justice, with fear in our hearts. Richard’s justice could not be trusted. I shivered in the heat, for who could determine the outcome of what we would witness today? I could not. This was to be no formal jousting to entertain the court, no ritualised sword against sword to exhibit the skill of the two combatants. This would be a contest unto death, and it might be that the one to perish was John’s beloved son, Henry of Derby.

How had it come to this? Everything had fallen perfectly into Richard’s hands when Henry and Mowbray had faced each other. Presented with the knowledge that Henry had leaked his confidence to the King, Mowbray in a fit of self-preservation, had promptly accused Henry of treason. Henry had retaliated in kind. A ferocious stand-off ensued which Richard leaped on like a hunting cat. Our puissant king had pronounced that Henry and Mowbray would meet in trial by combat at Coventry, before the whole court. Trial to the death to apportion guilt. Death for one, banishment for the other. Two Lords Appellant obliterated at one blow, to Richard’s seething delight.

So here we sat to witness the culmination of Richard’s plotting.

The two combatants were introduced. Henry and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, the highest and best of England’s blood, each man furnished with a lance. Despite the warmth of the day, I felt the blood drain from my skin, so much that I thought my face must be white with fear. No whiter than John’s whose expression was carved from granite.