He shifted in his saddle and turned to watch a juggler fling balls high in the sky. Is that what Edward must do as governor of his people, he idly wondered. Keep so many balls in the air? All of a sudden he recalled the conversation he had had with poor King Henry about the burden of kingship, and now Richard thanked the saints he was not destined to wear a crown.

One-by-one her family said goodbye to Margaret in the hall of the archbishop’s palace at Canterbury, where they had all stopped for the night to pray at Thomas a Becket’s shrine. Edward, Elizabeth, George and Richard each presented her with a parting gift, while Cecily, stoic as always, took her daughter aside into an adjoining room and gave her a mother’s blessing.

Watching Meg’s carriage and her entourage move slowly out of the courtyard on its way to Margate, and hence by ship to Flanders, Richard, standing with George and Edward, felt a real sadness at her loss. He had been touched when she sought him out at her wedding festivities at Stratford Langthorne Abbey to whisper that she had divined who was his lady love. “Such a beauty, Richard. And she is with child, is she not?” Meg had asked. Richard had known his flush confirmed her suspicion. He had inveigled Jack Howard to bring Kate to the abbey, amusing the older man who could not refuse. “Even if she were not such a beauty, I would not blame you for having fallen in love with her voice,” Meg had told him. “It is surpassing heavenly.”

Indeed, Margaret’s cheerful attitude throughout the week-long pre-marriage proceedings had impressed Richard so much, he had at one point actually concluded that Margaret would have made a better leader than the men in his family. Her regal bearing—at five-foot eight inches—and her ability to converse as easily with men about policy as with women about fashion would endear her to her new Burgundian subjects in a very short time, Richard had no doubt.

Edward suddenly cried: “Farewell, Mistress Nose-in-a-Book!” The friendly nickname Meg had earned for her love of books made Richard forget his sadness and cheerfully chime in.

Hearing this annoying endearment for the final time made Margaret lean out far enough to see her beloved family get smaller and smaller under the palace gate. She had never felt so alone. She knew it was the last glimpse she would have of them for years—perhaps for ever. Her tears ran unabashed down her face, and she clung to her wolfhound Astolat’s neck, as her faithful servant, the dwarf Fortunata, patted her mistress’s knee.

“Farewell, England,” Margaret sobbed into the wind. “And God save the house of York.”