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  The Rose of York

  FALL from

  GRACE

  SANDRA WORTH

  END TABLE BOOKS

  Copyright © 2008 by Sandra Worth

  This ebook edition © 2012 by Sandra Worth

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental..

  END TABLE BOOKS

  USA / Australia

  web: www.endtablebooks.com

  email: [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Reviews

  Background

  Principal Characters

  Historical Characters

  Introduction

  Fall from Grace

  1“God bless the King, and all his fellowship!”

  2“In the dead night, grim faces came and went.”

  3“To ride abroad redressing human wrongs.”

  4“For were I dead who is it would weep for me?”

  5“A star in heaven, a star...”

  6“Then a long silence came upon the hall...”

  7“I shudder, someone steps across my grave.”

  8“A moral child without the craft to rule.”

  9“And still she looked, and still the terror grew...”

  10“The blameless King…”

  11“He rooted out the slothful officer...”

  12“No light! so late! and dark and chill the night!”

  13“Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.”

  14“Who is he that he should rule us?”

  15“The good Queen… saddening in her childless castle.”

  16“The vermin voices here...”

  17“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

  18“And I, the last, go forth companionless...”

  19“Sir Mordred; he that like a subtle beast...”

  20“O my soul, be comforted!”

  21“But hither I shall never come again...”

  22“But how to take last leave of all I loved?”

  23“Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen!”

  24“Sir, there be many rumours on this head...”

  25“There will I hide thee ’till my life shall end...”

  26“Now must I hence...”

  27“For I, being simple, thought to work His will.”

  28“I hear the steps of Mordred in the west...”

  29“Ill doom is mine to war against my people...”

  30“I know not what I am...”

  31“Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies...”

  32“Now must I hence. Thro’ the thick night...”

  33“But let what will be, be.”

  34“And one last act of kinghood...”

  Epilogue: “Thy shadow still would glide from room to room.”

  Afterword

  Author’s note

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  ~ * ~

  Reviews and Awards

  Standing alone, won the FIRST PLACE AWARD and cash prize in the 2003 Francis Ford Coppola-supported NEW CENTURY WRITERS AWARDS for best unpublished and emerging writers. The final judges of the contest included top industry producers, directors, film marketing professionals, fiction writers, playwrights, fiction editors, screenwriters, executive producers, and literary agents.

  Standing alone, The Rose of York: Fall from Grace captured the FIRST PLACE PRIZE in the 2003 BAY AREA WRITERS LEAGUE OPEN MANUSCRIPT COMPETITION open to both published and unpublished writers, judged by a panel of professors from the University of Houston. Comment from the judges: “This is one fine masterful work, the true quill.”

  As part of The Rose of York series, Fall from Grace swept all nine categories of the 2000 Authorlink Competition judged by a top New York editor to win the GRAND PRIZE in the AUTHORLINK NEW AUTHOR AWARDS COMPETITION given to only one First Place Winner. Sandra was flown to the University of Georgia by Authorlink to receive her certificate and cash prize.

  As part of The Rose of York series, Fall From Grace won the FIRST PLACE PRIZE in the Historical/Western category of the 2000 AUTHORLINK NEW AUTHOR AWARDS COMPETITION judged by top New York editors and agents.

  ~ * ~

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank my editor and publisher, Kurt Florman of End Table Books, for his excellent work on this manuscript and David Major, partner and art director of End Table Books, for the stunning art work he has produced on all three books in The Rose of York series. My thanks go to fellow End Table Books author Wendy Dunn and my family for their support and encouragement.

  ~ * ~

  For my daughter, Erica

  - - -

  “Though truth for a time rest and be put to silence,

  yet it rotteth not, nor shall it perish.”

  —Richard, Duke of York, father of King Richard III, circa 1455

  “It is by suffering that God has most nearly approached to man.

  It is by suffering that man draws most near to God.”

  —Inscription at Stanford University Memorial Church

  ~ * ~

  Background

  In 1399, the childless King Richard II was deposed and murdered by Henry of Bolingbroke who became Henry IV and gave birth to the Lancastrian dynasty. For three generations the House of Lancaster ruled England: Henry IV, efficiently; Henry V, gloriously; and Henry VI, disastrously. Weary of injustice, men turned for relief to the blood heir of Richard II: Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. Thus began the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic conflict between the Houses of York and Lancaster for the Crown of England, which brought to the throne the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III.

  ~ * ~

  Principal Characters

  In a tumultuous era marked by peril and intrigue, reversals of fortune and violent death, the passions of a few rule the destiny of England and change the course of history…

  Richard: Distinguished by loyalty to his brother the King, and a tender love for his childhood sweetheart, Anne, he has known exile, loss, tragedy and betrayal. But his loyalty is first challenged by war, then by the ambitions of a scheming queen. Time and again he must choose between those he loves, until Destiny makes the final decision for him.

  Edward: A golden warrior-king, reckless, wanton, he can have any woman he wants, but he wants the only one he can’t have. When he marries her secretly and makes her his queen, he dooms himself and all whom he loves. (Deceased as story opens.)

  Bess: Edward’s detested and ambitious queen. Gilt-haired, cunning and vindictive, she has a heart as dark as her face is fair.

  George: Richard’s brother. Handsome, charming and consumed with hatred and greed, he will do anything it takes to get everything he wants. (Deceased as story opens.)

  Warwick the Kingmaker: Richard’s famed cousin, maker and destroyer of kings. More powerful and richer than King Edward himself, he attracts the jealousy of the queen and seals his fate. (Deceased as story opens.)

  John: The Kingmaker’s brother. Valiant and honourable, he is Richard’s beloved kinsman and Edward’s truest subject, but when the queen whispers in the king’s ear, he is forced to confront what no man should have to face… (Deceased as story opens.)

  Anne: The Kingmaker’s beautiful daughter. S
he is Richard’s only love, his light, his life…

  ~ * ~

  Historical Characters

  HOUSE OF YORK

  Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (Deceased as story opens)

  Cicely Neville, Duchess of York, his wife

  King Edward IV, their eldest son (Deceased as story opens)

  Elizabeth Woodville (Bess), Edward’s queen

  Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward and Bess Woodville

  Edward, elder son of King Edward and Bess Woodville

  Richard, their younger son

  Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, Bess’s elder son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey

  Richard Grey, Bess’s younger son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey

  King Richard III, formerly Duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Richard, Duke of York

  George, Duke of Clarence, Richard’s older brother (Deceased as story opens)

  Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, Richard’s youngest sister

  Ann, (Nan), Richard’s eldest sister, married to Sir Thomas St. Leger

  Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, Richard’s elder sister

  John de la Pole, (Jack), Earl of Lincoln, her eldest son, Richard’s nephew, later his heir to the throne

  Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick nicknamed “Kingmaker”, Richard’s father-in-law. (Deceased as story opens)

  Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, his wife and Richard’s mother-in-law.

  Anne Neville, Warwick’s daughter and Richard’s queen

  Edward (Ned), Anne and Richard’s only child

  Isabelle Neville (Bella), Anne’s older sister and wife to Richard’s brother George (deceased)

  Edward, Earl of Warwick, Bella and George’s son

  Margaret (Maggie), Bella and George’s daughter

  Katherine, Richard’s illegitimate daughter

  John of Gloucester (Johnnie), Richard’s illegitimate son.

  HOUSE OF LANCASTER

  Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham

  Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, later Henry VII

  Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor and wife of Lord Thomas Stanley

  ~ * ~

  Introduction

  Much has been written about Richard III, and many readers are familiar with Shakespeare’s portrayal of him as England’s most reviled and villainous monarch. What is not as widely known is that Richard III gave us a body of laws that forms the foundation of modern Western society. His legacy includes bail, the presumption of innocence, the protections in the jury system against bribery and tainted verdicts, and “Blind Justice”—the concept that all men should be seen as equal in the eyes of the law. He was the first king to proclaim his laws in English, so the poor could know their rights, and the first to raise a Jew to England’s knighthood.

  Such ideas were revolutionary in the fifteenth century. They alienated many in the nobility and the Church and played no small part in Richard’s ultimate fate. Two hundred years later, when it was safe to do so, men questioned the traditional view of Richard bequeathed to them by the Tudors and found themselves unable to reconcile the justician with the villain, the man with the myth. In the early twentieth century, such men came together to form the Richard III Society.

  Two of Richard’s most well known contemporary critics, Alison Weir and Desmond Seward, subscribe to Shakespeare’s depiction of him as a hunchbacked serial killer. In his book Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes, Bertram Fields, a prominent U.S. attorney and author, examines the school of thought represented by Weir and exposes the inconsistencies and deficiencies of the traditional view.

  Richard III caught my imagination when I first saw his portrait in the National Gallery in London. Then I read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. This compelling mystery inspired me to consume whatever I could find on Richard and to make several research trips to England in search of the true Richard. It was in Paul Murray Kendall’s Richard The Third that I finally found him. Kendall, a Shakespearean scholar and professor of English Literature, provides a most convincing and illuminating portrayal of Richard and his times, and it is his interpretation of events that is reflected in this book.

  While Shakespeare was a great dramatist, he never claimed to be a historian. In an age of torture and beheadings, he wrote to please the Tudors. The authority Shakespeare drew on was Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III, a derisive account of the last Plantagenet king, which More never finished. One of history’s enduring mysteries is why More broke off in mid-sentence and mid-dialogue to hide his manuscript. Fifteen years after his death, it was found by his nephew, translated from the Latin, and published. Had Sir Thomas More discovered the dangerous truth that the true villain was not Richard III, but the first of the Tudors, Henry VII?

  The question remains, and the debate continues.

  ~ * ~

  FALL FROM GRACE

  1483–1485

  Chapter 1

  “God bless the King, and all his fellowship!”

  The day dawned brilliant with sunshine for the first double coronation in two hundred years. At the hour of Prime, as church bells pealed across London, with Anne’s train following his, Richard of Gloucester left Westminster Hall for the crowning at the Abbey. Removing his shoes, he walked barefoot on the red carpet, heralds trumpeting the way, followed by his lords and a procession of priests, abbots, bishops, and a cardinal bearing a great Cross high over his head.

  Richard’s gaze fell on ginger-bearded Lord Stanley, who was carrying the mace. He remembered his own words: “One thing men can rely on, as surely as spring follows winter—a Stanley will ride at the winner’s side, no matter what his sin.” He hadn’t intended to reward Stanley for his treason, yet he had. To appease his own guilt for taking the life of a better man, he supposed, wincing at the memory of Lord Hastings. Even Stanley’s wife, Margaret Beaufort, had been greatly honoured this day. Harry Buckingham, a good friend and cousin whom he’d entrusted with the coronation, had arranged for her to carry Anne’s train—she, the mother of Henry Tudor, who, now that all true Lancastrian claimants were dead, had become their claimant merely because he lived! The world was indeed a strange place.

  Richard wondered how Anne fared. Suffering from a chill and fever on the previous day, she’d been carried in a litter for the traditional journey of the monarch from the Tower of London to Westminster Palace. Much to his relief, she had felt well enough this morning to walk in the ceremony, and now followed him into Westminster Abbey. At least this once the wagging tongues that sought evil omens would be stilled. No one would have guessed she had been so ill, for she looked beautiful in her crimson velvet mantle furred with miniver with her hair flowing down her back, giving no hint of her recent illness. His sister Liza walked behind her, trailed by more noble ladies and a line of knights. His eldest sister, Nan, however, was absent. Of course, his mother had not come. She had even refused her blessing. He forced the memory away. But the entire peerage of England was here. That was much to be grateful for. It meant that England accepted him with good heart.

  They approached the west door of the Abbey. The sign of the Red Pale in the courtyard of the almonry swung in the breeze. Here in 1476, William Caxton, that old mercer of Bruges, had come to print his books with the help of the Gutenberg press that he’d brought from Germany. It was a long way they’d travelled together since that wintry afternoon in the Bruges tavern, Richard thought, marvelling at the caprices of life. He’d been a youth of seventeen then, broken-hearted, hungry and poor, an exile from the land of his birth, with little hope. Now he would be King.

  His gaze moved from Caxton’s shop to his friend Francis Lovell, carrying the Sword of Justice, and he remembered a question Francis had posed when they were boys. “If you could be anyone in King Arthur’s court, who would you be?” He’d had no answer then. Lancelot, whom he’d admired as the embodiment of his valiant cousin John Neville, had seemed out of reach to him. Later, torn between love an
d loyalty, he had felt himself more like Lancelot than any of Arthur’s knights, for Lancelot had been the most flawed.

  I can answer you at last, Francis, he thought. I shall be Arthur, reigning with mercy and justice.

  ~ * ~

  The high, pure voices of the choristers lifted in praise. Song burst forth from the church, Domine in virtute—

  Richard and Anne entered the nave and proceeded down the aisle. Hundreds of candles flickered and incense filled the air with a rich, heavy scent, sending curls of smoke wafting into the gloomy nave. At the high altar, Anne watched as Richard knelt to be anointed with the holy Chrism, and rose to be vested in his regal garments of black and gold. Girded with the sword of state, he knelt again. Old Cardinal Bourchier picked up the crown of St. Edward and placed it on his head.

  From the corner of her eye, Anne saw Richard’s cousin Harry Buckingham turn away. As if he can’t bear the sight, she thought. Why wouldn’t this moment fill him with joy when he had been Richard’s staunchest ally, instrumental in gaining him the throne? His labours were crowned with Richard’s crowning—unless… unless…

  She had no time to finish the thought. Richard’s sister Liza was arranging her hair and Cardinal Bourchier was coming forward to anoint her forehead with oil. She felt his cold touch with a shiver. He held the crown over her. She tensed in its shadow. He set it down on her brow and the weight felt like a sudden blow. The sceptre and rod were thrust into her hands, and a hundred voices broke into a Te Deum. The song filled the cathedral, resounded against the stone pillars, coloured windows, and soaring arches, but in her throbbing head the chant dissolved into a chorus of jarring chords. She rose, and moved with Richard to their thrones in St. Edward’s Shrine for Mass.

  Stanley’s wife, Margaret Beaufort, appeared at her side.