Was it Woodstock now, acting in the name of the King’s Council, who was behind the arrest of these loyal allies?

Woodstock, desperate for the crown of England, as everyone knew?

She could not believe the king’s youngest uncle, a Plantagenet prince of the blood, would sink to such depths of disloyalty in his lust for power.

And yet last night, when the bearer of this dire news arrived after picking up his information at Calais, riding the long miles south through Burgundy, galloping his mud-stained horse under the Porte des Champeaux into the Great Courtyard of the palace of Avignon, he had been jubilant. The news that England was being weakened brought cheers from the onlookers. Woodstock’s name was mentioned with delight.

Pope Clement must be hymning with joy, thought Hildegard, confidant that the time was now right to drag the English into his power. With Prince Thomas as an ally how could he possibly fail?

Hildegard glanced up at the forbidding towers of the Old Palace where, high up, the window slit of Clement’s private chambers gleamed. Cressets burned in other private apartments. Shadows crossed and recrossed the source of light.

Running down the last of the steps into the main courtyard she was breathless with apprehension.

Pent within the high stone walls the noise of the new arrivals rolled like thunder. A crowd had swarmed out to greet the men-at-arms still riding in under the portcullis. Stable hands briskly attended the sweating horses, night servants, monks and cardinals with their pages, flocked into the yard, everyone dragged from sleep, night cloaks pulled round shoulders, wind swirling in eddies in the miserable January night. Monastics irritable at being dragged from their beds between the offices complained. Little enough sleep. Ill tempers later. But here, now, at the centre of this turmoil, an Englishman and his jostling henchmen.

Hildegard stared at the blazon on the surcoats of his men-at-arms. Unconsciously she pulled her hood lower to conceal her face. I know that badge. It depicted the arms of a vassal of a prince of the blood royal. Red, blue, gold. The light glittered over the crowned leopards, the fleur de lys. The sight confirmed her worst fears. It was the blazon of Prince Thomas of Woodstock.

She melted in among the people milling round to hear what was being said.

Torches stuttered light into the faces of the riders. Mail glinted. Weapons were visible as flashes of lethal steel. There was a smell of naphtha. Flames sizzled into the night. Smoke hung in a pall over the yard. The knight at the head of this raucous crowd gripped the reins of his caparisoned mount with one mailed hand as the glare from the torches sent his face into dark then light and back to dark as his destrier wheeled and turned. He raised a fist in a salute of triumph. Hildegard stared.

And I know you. His face was vaguely familiar. She searched her memory. Yes, you’re Sir John Fitzjohn.

Roaring with laughter at a quip by one of his men, with a sneer against the French to please his hosts - who were a fiefdom on their own and not subject to any French king but vassals only to the King of Heaven himself - he managed to express the physical superiority of a military man against unarmed monastics with every arrogant gesture. He made it clear he was not here to beg. Sir John, blond, big-boned, battle-scarred. Confident of his welcome.

Hildegard took in the value of his armour, the worth of his horse, the nobility of his hounds.

His mother had been one of John of Gaunt’s many mistresses. Royal blood, Plantagenet blood, ran in his veins. Duke John had allowed him the name Fitzjohn to give his bastard some status, siring several more children by the same woman before meeting Katharine Swynford who cajoled her way into the role of first concubine after his wife, the saintly Duchess Blanche, died of the plague.

The children Gaunt fathered on Katharine became known as the little Beauforts. Now nearing adulthood they preceded the Fitzjohns in all matters of importance which naturally led to friction between these two branches of Gaunt’s siring. In fact, Sir John Fitzjohn had a younger brother who had turned out badly. Escrick Fitzjohn was a name that still aroused in Hildegard a feeling of fear and revulsion.

Sir John was laughing out loud while his eyes searched the crowd in the glare from the swinging lanterns. He was handsome in a bold, physical manner, no doubt about that. His mother had been a renowned beauty like all Gaunt’s mistresses, but haughty, despite her origins, a quality she had obviously passed on to her eldest son. The arduous journey from England had not daunted his spirits. He was searching the crowd more closely now as if for a particular face. Hildegard noticed one of the foreign cardinals being hustled through the milling onlookers, his acolytes carving a path for him, then Fitzjohn swung down from his destrier, threw the reins without a glance to his page, and extended his arms in greeting. The two men embraced. The Englishman knelt to receive a blessing. Straightened at once, by no means humbled. Towering over the elderly cardinal. All smiles.

She tried to get closer but managed to hear only a few floating phrases, could hear the chuckles of the men standing beside their lord. A name or two hovered on the air. She edged deeper into the crowd.

Simon Burley, she heard, ears straining. That old war horse…in the knackers’ yard at last. A rumble of complacent laughter from those nearest. Hildegard burned with fury.

By the time she turned away as the crowd began to drift towards the palace she had heard enough to be stunned by the rumours now confirmed: Burley, Tresilian, Neville. All three impeached. Five other knights she knew to be similarly loyal to King Richard also on the list. And the final outrage, the condemnation of the mayor of London, Nick Brembre. A man more loyal to the king could not anywhere be found.

She walked in appalled fury after the heedless mob. The only crime of the accused was loyalty to the young king.

The so called King’s Council was controlled by Richard’s uncle, Thomas of Woodstock. And now the Council had spoken.

If they are accused of being traitors it will lead us to civil war - unless opposition is suppressed as it was during the Great Revolt. She recalled the bloodbath that had followed the people’s demands for bread and liberty seven years ago.

Horror stricken, she paced the yard as the rest of the onlookers flocked into the gaping entrance to the palace.

Ordinary people would not stand for it. Richard, his uncles said, was under age and could not rule without their guidance. But by now he was twenty, sharp, intelligent and well-educated, aware of the needs of his people. The King of France, ruling absolutely in his own right, though mad enough to believe himself made of glass, was nineteen.

The decisions of the far more able Richard were imposed on him by the King’s Council. Except that it wasn’t any king’s council but an instrument of power seized by John of Gaunt when Richard came to the throne as a child. His ambitious uncle, Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, thought he had a right to the throne himself and was not satisfied to be a mere regent. And yet he was so hated among the people even he had eventually realised he could never win them over. It was the boy king, Richard, whom the people loved and wanted.

Gaunt, pragmatic as always, put aside his mistress, Katharine Swynford, sought a diplomatic marriage with the daughter of the King of Castile and had recently taken himself off to Santiago de Compostela to be crowned there, content, it seemed, with that crown at least. It left the field clear for his youngest brother, Thomas of Woodstock, as ambitious for the English crown as John of Gaunt once was. Only one rival stood in Thomas’s way. It was his nephew, Gaunt’s eldest legitimate son, Henry Bolingbroke, nineteen years old like his cousin, King Richard.