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“You’ll pay for that, mark my words—” he hissed. “I won Bosworth. You lost Taunton. You are my captive now, and no more to me than dog flesh—”

  Henry recovered his cool demeanor, and drew himself up to his full height. “I am a patient man. Unlike you, I do nothing rashly and always calculate the consequences of my action. Every battle is won before it is ever fought. And I won Exeter in 1495.”

  “When you executed William Stanley.”

  They locked eyes. Henry VII smiled coldly. “Exactly.”

  And Bosworth when you had King Richard’s son poisoned. Richard dropped his gaze to hide his thoughts. More than anything in the world, he wanted to live.

  “I tell you this because I have not yet decided what to do with you,” Henry resumed. He strode back to the desk and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he regarded Richard. “However, one thing is certain. It can go hard for you, or it can go easy. Which is your preference?”

  “When you put it that way—” Richard gave Henry a wan smile, but if he thought to soften Henry’s stern expression, he failed. More gravely, he added, “I pray you remember that regicide is a loathsome sin in God’s eyes, and that He will send the devils of Hell to tear out the throat of the sinner.”

  “Brave words from a coward and you shall vomit them when I have done with you! I shall show you as a fool before all the world. You shall be known to the ages as the false prince who would be king.”

  Richard swallowed hard. Henry was a superstitious man, and Richard had thought to help himself by using his fear of God against him, but it had instead fired his anger. “I am what I am, and I will do anything you wish of me. I beseech only one boon.”

  Henry waited.

  “I beg you to send my wife back to Scotland. She has no part in our quarrel.”

  “Perhaps not,” replied Henry, “but as I explained, I do nothing rashly. Therefore I promise nothing. Meanwhile, to get back to the matter at hand, I hold the crown, and you are who I say you are. Whatever you call yourself, you are naught but a boatman’s son.”

  Richard lifted his chin in reply, but said nothing.

  “You are going into that room across the hall and you will tell the lords assembled there that you lied,” Henry resumed. “You will tell them that you are an imposter. That you have not an ounce of royal blood in your veins. Is that understood?”

  “Clearly,” Richard replied.

  “But first,” said Henry. “You’ll need a change of clothes. Cloth of gold does not become you.”

  Henry strode into the council chamber, and Richard followed behind. Even though he was now attired in a humble tunic devoid of the trappings of nobility, he thought he heard a soft gasp as he entered, one hastily suppressed. They, like their master, were taken aback by his likeness to his father, King Edward, and he wondered absently if that bode him well, or ill.

  “We present to you the imposter prince—the boatman’s son, Piers Osbeck from Flanders,” said Henry.

  Richard gave King Henry a stiff bow, and asked for mercy, as he had been instructed to do. At least he didn’t have to prostrate himself on the floor, as traitors normally did. Henry had not demanded that, perhaps because Richard was not supposed to have been born an English subject, or perhaps because Henry knew it was not something to which Richard would have readily submitted, even in his circumstances.

  “We have heard,” said Henry, “that you call yourself Richard, son of King Edward. In this room are some who were companions of that lord. Look around and see if you recognize them.”

  Richard didn’t bother to glance at the faces. “I do not know any of these men,” he said without hesitation. But among those in the crowd that he had glimpsed as he’d entered was John Rodon, the servant who had turned down his sheets and brought him his nightly cup of watery wine when he’d been a child. Rodon had not joined the conspirators of 1495 because he had received several royal appointments from Henry and enjoyed a good life that he had no desire to relinquish. Richard had also seen his half-brother, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset. Though Dorset had changed much in the intervening years—as Richard had—neither could say they knew one another. Dorset had not joined the conspiracy because Henry held his son hostage, and he was also in financial bondage to Henry, his lands and titles forfeit until such time he proved his loyalty to Henry’s satisfaction. Every man here knew—as Richard knew—that he had to be the imposter now.

  “I do not know these men,” Richard went on, as Henry had instructed him. “I have never been to England. I have been induced by the English and the Irish to learn the English language and commit this fraud. For two years I have longed to escape these troubles, but Fortune did not permit me to.”

  At least the last sentence was true, Richard thought, remembering with an ache the night at the Mount when Catherine had begged him to abandon his quest. With all his being, he’d wanted to turn back, but to do so would have meant letting down those who depended on him. Yet, in the end, he had betrayed them all in the most faithless and despicable fashion possible, from his royal Aunt Meg down to the poorest tin miner. He let his head drop, depleted by the effort and strain of surrendering his hopes, his dreams, his freedom, and everything he held dear to his bitterest foe on earth.

  “Guards, remove him,” said Henry. “You, my lords, have heard what this feigned boy has to say. He didn’t recognize any of you and”—he turned to Richard’s boyhood servant—“for certes, he should have known you, Rodon, shouldn’t he, my man?”

  “Aye, Sire,” replied Rodon. “He should have.”

  Rodon kept seeing in his mind’s eye the beautiful fair-haired boy he had once served, and loved. The young man who had come into the room was that child grown: the same dull left eye, the same little scar beneath the eye. Maybe even the same mole high on his thigh, if anyone had cared to look.

  What would become of his prince? Rodon heaved a long sigh. Best he not think on it, he told himself. There was nothing to be done about it now, was there? Nothing at all, and in this world every man had to look out for himself.

  Lord Daubeney finished reading King Henry’s missive, and turned thoughtfully to the window, assailed by a gamut of tangled emotions. The winds were roaring around the Mount and lashing the waves, as if to whip them into submission, and for some reason, he thought of King Henry and the young Pretender, and the road he himself had taken long ago that had brought him here, to this point in his life and the distasteful task that awaited.

  Mayhap, Daubeney thought, he’d made the wrong decision in 1484, but what good was regret when the shit could not be put back into the horse? Would he change anything even if he could? Henry had been grateful to him. He’d done well under the Tudor. Though he was low born, he enjoyed a high position as Tudor’s foremost military commander, for Tudor had a distrust of those better born than himself. Daubeney had even been created lord, one of the few times that tight-fisted Tudor had given away a barony.

  He glanced back at the letter in his hand. Henry had instructed him to deliver Lady Catherine to him as soon as he’d taken her from sanctuary, but he had delayed. His sovereign had accepted his reason for keeping her back, but his letter also held warning. Daubeney had explained Catherine’s delirium following the birth of her dead child, and last week, he’d followed up that missive with another advising the king that Catherine would likely survive, but her health remained delicate and she needed to build up her strength for the journey to Shene.

  “We trust she shall shortly come unto us,” Henry had written back, “as she is in dole.” The “dole” meant she could have time to mourn; the “shortly” meant she couldn’t have much. King Henry had looked forward to this moment for two years, and he wanted to see his prize. He had an eye for women, and Lady Catherine was a beauty of legendary fame across Britain. Aye, Daubeney thought with an audible sigh, Henry wanted his prize, and he didn’t want to wait a moment longer than he had to.

  Daubeney had seen much on the battlefield, both of suffering and of valor. But this was differe
nt. Catherine was not simply in fragile health physically; she was in deep emotional distress from the capture of her husband and the implosion of her world. In a single blow, Fate had stripped her of husband, children, kith and kin, and surrendered her up to the mercy of her enemies. Yet in the face of cruel Fortune, she had held her head high at St. Buryan with a courage he had found deeply touching. He simply didn’t have the heart to surrender her to the Tudor, who had taken so much from her already, and might yet take more. He turned to his scrivener.

  “Write this in answer to the king . . . To His Most High Grace and Savior of England, Henry VII, by God’s Grace King of England—et cetera . . .” he dictated. “The Lady Catherine has but one gown, and that gown is torn and stained, and shows evidence of her travails. Should you wish to have her displayed in more suitable attire—since that would reflect on your great mercy—I most humbly request your royal permission to order a new gown for her. If you could advise me yea or nay as to this matter, and if yea, how much I should spend, I would be most grateful to your Majesty.”

  That should buy her a few more days, he thought. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the scrivener.

  Daubeney leaned his weight on the windowsill and gazed out at the gloomy clouds passing swiftly overhead. Never would he have had to trouble King Edward IV or Richard III on such a trivial matter, for both had been generous men. Tudor’s parsimony had raised eyebrows across the land from the first, but now, with his spies well launched in the kingdom and the Tower generously supplied with horrific instruments of torture, men no longer dared take anything for granted, even the expenditure of such a small sum from the royal purse. Henry had a long memory, was tight-fisted and vengeful, and Daubeney knew he had to be careful where he trod.

  There were, however, some things a man of conscience could not do. One was to deliver this poor young beauty to the dragon before she had the strength to stand and meet her fate with dignity.

  At the Mount, oblivious to the murmur of voices in the court and the chanting of the monks in the chapel, Catherine stood quietly as her ladies dressed her in the new attire King Henry had sent for her journey to London: black hose and shoes, black kirtle and satin gown with a braid of black ribbon decorating the high square collar and running down the front and along the hem. They adjusted the braided belt low on her hips, and helped her into a black velvet riding cloak and a matching velvet hat. She found it ironic that what had been set in motion by a king’s gift of fifteen ells of crimson satin on her eighteenth birthday and an invitation to a royal feast should end two years later in a king’s gift of black satin for a mourning gown, and a summons to appear at his court.

  She remembered little of these past weeks, for she had been fading in and out of consciousness, and her ladies had feared for her life—so they had told her. But one day, she had opened her eyes and not drifted back into deep sleep. “Agatha?” she’d asked, gazing at her lady-in-waiting with an unusually bright and steady look. Agatha had laid down her rosary beads and run to summon Alice, crying, “The Virgin has answered our prayers—our lady lives!”

  So they told her.

  The sick giddiness Catherine remembered was gone, though her head still pounded. Alice set her riding cloak carefully over her shoulders, and handed her the black gloves the king had sent. As Catherine pulled them on, she lifted her gaze to Alice’s empty arms. A thought from Scripture froze in her mind: He giveth, and he taketh away. She turned her face to the window; the panes were glazed with ice, and she could see nothing. Now she heard the words the monks chanted in the church, Quo es Tu, Deus? Quare me repulisti . . . quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus? Where are You, God? Why do You reject me? Why must I go about in mourning, with the enemy oppressing me?

  Catherine joined her voice softly to theirs. “Why are you so downcast, O my soul?” she sang. “Why do you sigh within me? Send forth Your light and Your fidelity, O my God. Then I will give thanks to You upon my harp, O God, my God—” She broke off. The words felt hollow to her and gave no comfort. She noticed tears glistening in the eyes of her companions, and wondered why they were touched when she felt nothing.

  “You are ready,” Agatha said.

  Catherine took the arm Alice offered, for she still had difficulty walking. Today they would leave the Mount, and on the way she wished to stop at the cow shed to bid Brother Nicholas farewell. Slowly she maneuvered the steep stone steps that wound down to the ledge, trailed by a flock of Lord Daubeney’s men who had been set to guard her. She was nearly upon the old monk before he noticed her approach.

  “Lady Catherine—” He broke off, his eyes misting at the sight of her. Beneath her black hood her face was even paler than he remembered. The last time he’d seen her, she was stretched out on a litter, prostrate and near death as they’d carried her to St. Buryan. Even so, she had brought to mind a pale rose that shines bright against the gloom of downcast skies. Even time might not be able to erase beauty that deep, he thought, yet what good did it do her? He averted his gaze lest his eyes betray his thoughts. Taking Bessie and Michelle by their halters, he led them to the barn, their bells tinkling loudly in the wind, and deposited them by a bale of hay where the others already stood lazily munching the cud.

  Catherine watched as he came toward her. She, too, was thinking of the last time she had seen Brother Nicholas. It was before Richard had left for—no, she must not dwell on what was, and what can never be again. She attempted a smile as she threw a glance behind him at the cow shed. “How are they doing?” she asked.

  “They are well, my dear lady, and Michelle is blessed to have a healthy new calf born to her last month.”

  Tears sprang to Catherine’s eyes. She blinked them gone. “Forgive me—”

  “There is nothing to forgive, my child.” He stretched out his hand to her, penitent to have inflicted grief with his careless words. “Here, let us sit together, as we did long ago.”

  Of course, it was not long ago, only a few weeks past, but so much had happened that it might as well have been another lifetime. Of Richard, and wee Dickon, and her dead babe, she dared not think, but thoughts of her father did not need quelling. Despite the monk’s gentleness and her father’s stoicism, this dear man reminded her of him so very much. A vision of her father bidding her farewell at Ayr rose up before her . . . Ayr, where she might have stopped Richard. “If only we could turn time back, how much could be set right,” she whispered.

  He patted her hand, but didn’t trust himself to speak.

  Catherine found her voice again. “I could not leave here ’ere I spoke to you. They tell me that my lord—my lord—” She could barely get out the words, so terrible were they. “That he—he deserted his men at Taunton. Is it true?”

  The old monk bowed his head and didn’t reply for a long moment. Some of those men had returned to the Mount from Taunton, weeping, still disbelieving and asking the monks for answers that none could give. “I was willing to die for him,” one cried, “and he abandoned us—” He had looked at the poor man on whose head the tyrant’s fearful wrath would soon fall. “Remember, my son, the flesh is weak,” he had replied, “and tender are the petals of youth.”

  “Aye, ’tis true,” Brother Nicholas murmured.

  In the silence that fell between them, Catherine heard the deafening force of the howling winds, the mewing of the birds, and the angry roar of the ocean dashing the rocks below. She closed her eyes against the tumult in her mind. To have this dreadful knowledge confirmed—it was too terrible to be true! And yet—and yet—

  She couldn’t believe it of Richard. He would never desert his troops to save himself. Compassion was his most compelling trait, and compassion alone would not have permitted him to abandon his men so heedlessly. The suffering of others had always affected him deeply, and over their twenty-two months together she’d borne witness to a multitude of little acts of pity and largess. He once encountered a blind dove slamming into walls and slew it for mercy’s sake as he wept for what he had
to do. But his greatest act of pity was his vain effort to turn James back from the pain of war. That such a kind heart should shrink from killing others—even his enemies—must surely come as no surprise?

  No, she would not accept cowardice, but she did accept partial blame. Mindless, oblivious, giddy with excitement and the promise of adventure, had she not recklessly urged him on at Ayr? But for her, Richard would not have gone into battle unprepared the way he did, alone and facing terrors unimaginable.

  If she had only allowed herself to see matters more clearly, she might have anticipated this outcome. Without the knight’s training to harden him to killing and warfare, and with no military commander to advise him, how could Richard not shrink from what lay ahead? Nor did his soft heart help him in war.

  She closed her eyes. She would not be so quick to condemn him. His defeat had already condemned him. That was the cruelest tragedy—for Richard, and for England. He would have made a fine king, could he have but won back his throne.

  She said, “I had a fearful dream, Brother Nicholas. I dreamt of Death.”

  The monk looked at her, but said nothing.

  “He—it—wore a terrible guise—and still, I wished to go with him. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Indeed I have, my dear. Those who have returned from the threshold of death tell us of such things.”

  “I wanted to go with it—with him—I begged to go. But he wouldn’t have me. He said it wasn’t my time. God has rejected me, and so, too, has Death. What do I do, Brother Nicholas? How do I go on? What do I live for? You have to tell me. I know not how to go on—”

  “Nay, nay, my child! God has not rejected you. In all your woe, He is ever with thee, but you must believe—you must have faith. The Devil sends us trials to turn us away from God. You must cling to Him with all your strength, and I am thinking that you are stronger than you know. Your husband lives, and somewhere your child also lives. They need you, my dear. You must be strong and carry on—for them.”