As she steps from the carriage to climb the wooden steps of the platform set up for her at the cathedral’s north door, she hears a roar in the distance and knows he’s close; that even now he’s passing through Newgate. She need only watch for him now, over the heads of her retainers dressed in the blue and murrey of York, over the cheering crowd, through the smoke of the bonfires burning in the street and the air hung with cries of Edward! Edward! York! York!

At last she sees him, shining in the distance, his helmet held in the crook of his arm. He’s laughing, waving at the crowds, leaning down from his deep-chested horse to receive laurel boughs and kisses from women his guards can neither hold back nor restrain.

Edward. A feast for the starving.

She lets her heart ride to him on the crowd’s roar.

And now he’s here, dismounting, setting his foot to the step; her vision is full of him, hampered only by the mist of her breath on the cold bright air. She holds out a hand. He takes it and kneels. She thrills to the warm hardness of his lips on her fingers, then she’s in his embrace, his head lowered to her brow, his cheek burning against hers.

‘Give them to me, Edward,’ she whispers in his ear. ‘The butcher Clifford. That bitch the Queen.’

‘In good time, Captain Mother,’ he promises.

She looks out across his shoulder through a sudden sting of tears and it seems, for a moment, that three suns shine again in the sky, that fickle trick of Heaven’s light that Edward seized upon in battle and harnessed to his will. She will make it his blazon.

‘You are the sun in splendour,’ she tells him, and gives him over to the glory of the crowd.

Epilogue

On 29 March 1461, Palm Sunday, between the Yorkshire towns of Towton and Saxton, Edward defeated his enemies in England’s bloodiest ever battle. Around a tenth of the fighting-age population took to the field. Almost half of them died.

He fought under his banner of the sun in splendour, and was crowned beneath it as King Edward IV on his return to London, on 28 June 1461. As Cecily promised, the sun became his blazon and the symbol of his reign.

Before leaving London to secure his victory, Edward had given Cecily sole command of his household, effectively making her England’s regent during his absence. From the day of his coronation, she no longer styled herself Duchess of York or Dowager, but as Cecily, the King’s Mother.

Afterword

Writing Cecily

This novel’s been a long time coming. The seed of it was planted in childhood, by a mother for whom history and story were two sides of the same coin. I later met a history teacher who shared that conviction.