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  The knight paled. “Sire—I—”

  Richard tore it from his hands angrily, and read:

  The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our dog,

  Rule all England under a hog.

  His hand shook, his face burned. He crushed the parchment in his fist. Somewhere in the crowd, someone tittered. Bile rose to his mouth and his pulse pounded furiously in his ears.

  “Who dares?” Richard hissed through white lips.

  The mayor swallowed. “We believe it is a Wiltshire m-man. A certain W-William Colyngbourne, an agent of Henry Tudor’s. He was once an officer of your royal lady mother, the Duchess of York, Sire.”

  “I know him,” Richard said tersely. Colyngbourne had been dismissed from his post and replaced by one of his own followers when Richard took the Crown. “Has he been apprehended?”

  “Not yet, Sire.”

  “I want him apprehended,” said Richard in a deadly voice.

  “Aye, Sire! And he shall be, he shall. He’s eluded us s-since July when he posted the f-first of these doggerels, but we’re close now. Close, indeed.”

  “July?” Richard demanded. “Why was I not informed?”

  The mayor coloured. “Sire, you—it did not seem—you were—it was—”

  Anne leaned over and touched Richard’s sleeve. She understood what the man was trying to say. Richard had not been informed because of Ned; they had not the heart. She met his eyes. Richard’s rancour drained. “Lord Mayor, I thank you for your consideration of our grief.” With a heart that weighed like stone in his breast, Richard nudged White Surrey forward.

  The cavalcade neared Westminster. The holy song of the monks floated to him from the Abbey doors to the east. To the west, the rhythmic clatter of metal resounded from the composing room of William Caxton’s printing shop, and the sharp smell of wet ink wafted on the air. His eyes fixed on the sign of the Red Pale. Sixteen months had passed since his coronation. The sign was swinging in the wind, as it had on that day when he’d walked to the Abbey with his heart filled with joy. Ahead had lain the future; dreams that could be worked into action; King Arthur’s court that could be brought back to England for the glory of God.

  Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—

  Nothing had turned out as he had dreamed.

  ~ * ~

  With slow, gentle strokes, Anne caressed Ned’s little hound, Sir Tristan, who had curled up and fallen asleep in her lap. “We should be enemies, yet you’re my dearest friend,” she said, watching Elizabeth’s fair head as she bent intently over her embroidery.

  Elizabeth of York slid the needle through her tapestry and knotted the wine silk thread. She broke it with her teeth and smiled. “It seems another lifetime when I thought of you as an enemy. How strange life is.”

  “If we loved as easily as we hated, we could change the world,” said Anne.

  “You and His Grace have loved one another since childhood, they say.” There was a wistful note in Elizabeth’s voice.

  “Aye, since I was seven years old… I remember the first time Richard came to Middleham. It was soon after his brother Edward was crowned. He was so young… so unsure of himself… and frightened.” And God help us, she thought, I see that same look now. He’s worked his heart out doing good, but his enemies lie about him, twist everything to blacken him, and give him no credit for the loyalty that is his strongest trait. And all those wounding slanders have shaken his belief in himself and destroyed what little pleasure might have been his.

  Elizabeth’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Sometimes, though I could be mistaken—” she broke off in embarrassment. “No, ’tis foolishness.”

  “Tell me what you were going to say, Elizabeth.”

  Scarlet stained Elizabeth’s cheeks. “Truly, it was nothing, my lady.”

  “I must know.”

  Elizabeth’s fingers slackened around her embroidery. She turned her gaze on the river and a faraway look came into her eyes. “It’s just that… sometimes… I see an odd expression on his face, when he thinks no one is looking.”

  “Aye?”

  “Fear, and doubt, Madame. Forgive me, but I’ve seen that in his eyes, and it wounds me to the heart.”

  Anne caught her breath. After a moment she reached out and gently touched Elizabeth’s gold hair, gathered beneath a silver circlet and gauzy veil. Once her own hair had been that bright. “Aye, child, I know.”

  “And I fear for him,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Because you love him,” Anne said.

  The girl drew away in horror. “No, my lady, no!”

  “You must not be ashamed of loving.”

  “I’d never do anything to hurt you— I’d give my life before I’d hurt you—” Elizabeth fell to her knees, seized Anne’s hands. “Madame, pray believe me! You’ve been so good to me, I’d never repay you with such ingratitude!” Anne was about to reply when she felt suddenly faint. On the wind she had caught the sharp smell of the river, a foul pungent odour that summoned into her mind the memory of the sea voyage to Calais when she’d fled England for her life, and the filthy sailor who had coughed blood into her face. She pushed herself up from her chair on trembling legs. Sir Tristan jumped off with a start. The doctors had been baffled by her illness. Now she knew what she had.

  The White Plague.

  She clutched her stomach, assailed by a wave of nausea. Elizabeth leapt to her feet, seized her by the shoulders. “My lady, what is it?” she cried.

  With a nod of her head, Anne indicated a far window that stood open to the rose garden. “There,” she managed. Leaning heavily on Elizabeth’s arm, she made her way slowly to the silver cushioned seat. There was no dark river odour here, only the sweet scent of roses and gillyflowers. She patted the empty space beside her.

  “Why must you think you’ve harmed with your love, child?” Anne murmured when she felt strong enough to speak again. “All we take with us when we die is the love we leave behind.”

  Elizabeth regarded her with a puzzled expression.

  “Love is all there is, dear child. All that matters… all that remains to warm the hearts we leave behind when we ourselves depart this world. We, in turn, take with us their love when we go.” She looked out at the garden and her eyes fell on a distant tree. A majestic chestnut with wide, sprawling branches. Beneath such stately boughs she’d picnicked with Ned, and once, long ago, held court with Richard in their mythical childhood kingdom of Avalon. Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “Ned has my love, and I keep his— here—” She laid a hand to her bosom. “As long as I live, I’ll remember his love—” A terrible pain seared her lungs, cutting off her breath. She gasped; the garden wavered in her sight.

  “Madame, madame!” Elizabeth cried. “Are you all right?”

  Through the darkness that engulfed her, Anne felt the girl’s strong arms encircle her, hold her steady. Aye, Elizabeth was her gift to Richard. With Elizabeth’s love and strength, she would rescue him from his hopelessness and despair, as surely as he had rescued her from that kitchen in Cheapside years ago.

  The nausea, which had been coming on with increasing frequency of late, faded, but her breathing was still shallow and her chest hurt with each intake of air.

  “’Tis nothing… merely a… passing pain.” She spoke haltingly to conserve her energy. “Now… I’ve something to say… Then you must make me a promise.” Again that resemblance to herself. Though the child had her father’s eyes, with emotion they tended to darken, so that they sometimes seemed violet, like her own.

  “Anything, Madame.”

  “Stop… calling… me ‘Madame’,” she breathed, “I am Anne.”

  “Aye, my dear lady Anne.”

  “We… must plan… for the future.”

  “The future?”

  “Yours… and Richard’s.”

  Elizabeth stared at her with uncomprehending shock.

  “Daily I lose strength… It’ll not be long now, I know,” Anne whispered, her voice a bar
e tremor. “Some days are… difficult. If I could be at ease about Richard, I could let go… You’re right, dear Elizabeth. He is so alone…” Her eyes returned to the tree and misted. “Alone with so much hate around him—” She broke off. She knew now what she had always suspected. She had an ill-divining spirit. The shadows she’d seen pressing around them on their coronation were real enough, not imagined. And the heaviness she felt surrounding Richard now would not be dispelled, except with love.

  Elizabeth took her hand, giving comfort. She lifted her eyes to Elizabeth’s face. “He’ll… not survive, Elizabeth… without love… You must comfort him… help him. He’ll need you…”

  “For the King there is only you,” Elizabeth cried. “He’s not even aware I exist.”

  “Then… we must change that. Make… him aware. He’s had much on his mind… but he wishes the Christmas festivities to be especially bright this year—” Especially bright, to bury sorrow past bearing. “We shall make him notice you… Aye, Elizabeth, you’re what… Richard needs… What England needs.”

  “But I’m his niece—we cannot marry!”

  “The Pope will grant a dispensation… if the price is high enough…” For a while after Ned’s death, she’d thought God was punishing her for having wed without a dispensation. She had long since rejected that notion. Though she knew she was edging perilously close to heresy, she simply couldn’t accept the idea of a vengeful God. God was not Anger. He was Love. But Popes were men, and men were tainted with greed. “In truth, your blood bond… matters not. I have come to believe… that God sees no sin in love… except where that love brings pain to others.” She paused to catch her breath. “Together… you shall bear him children and… turn his crown of sorrows… into a wreath of roses.”

  Her chest heaved with the effort of speech, but she managed to touch the girl’s cheek in a loving gesture. “You shall… make a fine queen… Elizabeth.” Then she smiled. For even the bleakest winter’s day held the promise of spring.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter 17

  “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

  A month after Richard arrived in London, William Colyngbourne, the maker of the impudent lampoon, was caught and indicted for his seditious, mocking rhyme, and charged with paying a man to deliver a message to the French court that Richard intended to make war on France and throw their envoys into prison.

  “We must make an example of that traitor!” Richard raged. That traitor who had not only ridiculed him and his government before all England but had cost him the chance to make peace with France! That traitor, laughing at him like Trollope who had sworn fealty to his father, absconded with his battle plans, then led the Christmas ambush at Wakefield in which his father and brother were slain. That traitor, laughing at him, as Buckingham had laughed—

  “Traitors embody all that’s vile in man!” Richard kicked over a chair and swept an arm across the table, sending goblets crashing to the floor. “He must suffer before he dies!” He turned on his councillors. “He must suffer!”

  Catesby, Francis, Rob Percy, Scrope, and Ratcliffe stood pale-faced, staring at him as though he had lost his mind. He pressed a hand to his aching head, sank heavily into a chair. “He must suffer,” he said quietly. “He is a traitor.”

  Catesby cleared his throat. “Aye, Sire. That he is, and well we know it, and he must die the foul death of a traitor. But first he must be tried, so that the people will know justice was done.”

  “Catesby gives sound advice, Richard,” said Francis. “Colyngbourne must be proven guilty by a commission of law. A fair-minded commission.”

  “I’ve always upheld the law!” snapped Richard, offended by the implication. Then, reflected in their eyes, he saw the scene in the Tower where Edward’s friend, Hastings, once his own ally, had been rushed out of the council chamber and beheaded for his treason. Since the execution had been hasty, a log had served as the executioner’s block. He looked away with shame.

  “Colyngbourne shall have his day in court and it shall be as unimpeachable and impressive a commission as I can appoint. Men shall not say I indulged my malice.”

  Urgent hoof beats sounded in the outer court.

  “My lord, it’s the yeoman of the Chamber, William Bolton, whom you sent to Hammes to bring back Oxford,” said Catesby, glancing out the window. “But Oxford is not with him!”

  Richard pushed him aside and examined the group dismounting in the snowy courtyard. John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the greatest Lancastrian leader alive. If he had escaped to Tudor’s side—

  He crushed the thought. Footsteps sounded on the stair. William Bolton appeared at the threshold of the chamber. One look at his face and Richard knew.

  Sweeping his hat beneath his arm, Bolton strode up to do his obeisance.

  “Oxford has escaped,” said Richard, before Bolton could speak.

  “Aye, Sire. You were right to suspect the Lieutenant, James Blount. He not only helped Oxford escape, but fled with him to Paris. When a detachment from Calais was sent to investigate the situation at Hammes, they were refused admittance. The castle is now under siege.”

  Richard gazed out the window. Another dismal day. Grey, cold, miserable. And the snow, covering what yesterday had been green, or so it seemed. People hurried here and there below in the courtyard, carrying sacks, leading horses, hammering repairs, and out beyond the walls of Westminster Palace, in the crowded streets, beggars begged, vendors hawked their wares, ladies shopped for silks, and butchers slaughtered animals. Life went on as it had for centuries. With one difference. Chivalry was dying. He leaned his full weight on the stone embrasure of the windowsill. Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—The code of honour that had held good men together since King Arthur’s days was fragmenting, dissolving. Oaths, loyalty, meant nothing. Soon man would sink back into the beast. The round table had been splintered by betrayals and feuds. Then, as now. What had changed?

  Without a word, he strode out of the council room, leaving his men staring after him in stunned surprise. He crossed the snowy court and took the tower steps up into the massive Keep, unaware of the people who jabbed one another with their elbows as he passed. A chill wind blew through the stairwell from the battlements above. Voices came to him; men laughing at a jest, women chattering with gossip. He wondered if Anne would be in the privy suite. She was not. There were only the servants, polishing mirrors, beating the mattress, sweeping the rushes. One of his squires sat cleaning the jewelled sword that had been a gift to him from Edward before Barnet. The acid odour of vinegar pervaded the room and transported him to the past, and all at once it was his young squire, red-haired Johnnie Milewater, sitting there again, head bent, polishing his sword on the eve of battle.

  The chambermaids straightened in surprise and the squire leapt to his feet. With a limp motion of the hand, Richard dismissed them. The door thudded shut. He went to the altar in the alcove. On the prayer desk stood his copy of Wycliff’s translation of the New Testament. He laid his palm on its gilded brown leather cover.

  He had ordered the laws enacted by his Parliament to be proclaimed in English instead of Latin so that his people would understand their rights. For the same reason, he owned a Lollard Testament, not because he was a Lollard and disavowed the miracle of transubstantiation or thought the church too rich and corrupt, but merely to read the Bible in English. To understand God’s words more clearly. Yet never in his life had he felt so distanced from God as he did at this moment. Despite all his good works, he had failed to win His favour. For all his piety, his prayers fell on deaf ears.

  He lifted his eyes to the gold enamelled triptych that stood below the altar, a gift from his mother on his ninth birthday, the year he’d left for Middleham. The left panel depicted the Kiss of Judas… Aye, he understood too well what it meant to be kissed by Judas… The right displayed the Last Judgement and the tortures of the damned. He winced, averted his face from their agony and the ruby drops of blood. He lo
oked to the centre where the Virgin grieved over the dead Christ. In her stricken face he saw Anne, who grieved over Ned… Why had the Blessed Mother not protected Anne? Why did God not hear his prayers?

  God.

  He had taken Ned from him. Now He might take Anne. She was wasting away, with scarce enough strength most days to rise from bed. He raised his eyes to Christ’s face on the silver cross, contorted with suffering, and sank to his knees. He tried to pray, but he could find no words.

  ~ * ~

  “The messenger is here to report on the execution of the traitor Colyngbourne, Sire,” announced the herald. The December morning was bitterly cold, yet Richard leaned out of the open window in the Painted Chamber, watching the snow fall and listening to the wind howl, oblivious to the icy wind lashing his face and whipping his furs.

  “Tudor’s agent died the foul death of a traitor, Sire,” said the messenger. “He was hanged on a new pair of gallows, cut down while alive, and his bowels were ripped from his belly and burned before his eyes. He lived until the butcher put his hand into the bulk of his body, for he said at the same instant, ‘O Lord Jesus, yet more trouble,’ and then he expired.”

  Someone muttered, “So may all traitors end.” To which many of his lords and a number of his officers and knights, murmured, “Aye, aye.”

  Richard gave a nod of dismissal and the messenger withdrew. He felt no satisfaction, only a terrible tenseness in his body. He moved back to the council table, picked up a document from a sheaf of papers and held it out to the messenger from Calais who had come with the ill tidings two days before. “I am granting the garrison at Hammes a full pardon. You will leave today and inform them of it.”

  “My lord, the wife of the traitor Blount was unable to escape with him. Do you wish her returned to England for punishment?”

  “She is included in the pardon and may go wherever she wishes.”

  “Even to France?”

  “Aye,” said Richard.

  “My lord, you are too merciful!” Sir Ralph Ashton exclaimed in a shocked tone, a hand to his dagger hilt.