“Never use Lucifer’s name in this, Richard, I beg of you,” Cecily said when she eventually loosed him. “It is a dangerous thing to say, and if you have enemies in life, they will surely use it to bring you down. You will see Doctor Cooke in the morning who is sure to be able to fit you with some sort of brace that will help.” She did not mention the other remedies Constance had described many years ago, including a contraption like the rack that had sometimes been employed for spinal ailments she had seen while studying in Padua. “We must not question why God has chosen to afflict us,” Cecily soothed. “You are the very model of a good man and must put guilty thoughts aside.”

Cecily’s mind raced back to the hour of this son’s difficult birth, but with Constance and her favorite midwife at Fotheringhay present, Richard had been born healthy, if a little small. She thought of all the times George had knocked him down as a boy, wrestled too hard, tied him to a tree as a “prisoner” in the games he played with the older boys. Then there was the time Richard had fallen off a hay wagon and landed hard on his backside. He had complained of pain for a week or so but was soon running and climbing as before. Surely these were normal incidents in a family of boys, she reasoned, and not to blame for Richard’s crookedness.

Cecily turned him around. “With a little more padding in your pourpoint here,” and she smoothed the quilted back of the jacket, “the bulge will not be noticeable. And I promise I shall tell no one, except the doctor.”

Richard nodded his thanks. “And pray for me, Mother. I ask that you pray for me.”

“Aye, I shall. Remember, Richard, God tests the faith of those he loves the most. Take heart.”

The doctor’s plump fingers probed Richard’s back for several minutes, tut-tutting as he went. They were behind a screen in Cecily’s solar with the duchess plying Dr. Cooke with a myriad of questions, the most embarrassing of which was “Will he be able to sire children?” He wanted to cry out: “I already have, Mother!” but he thought it wise to keep his mother in the dark about his romantic life—he was certain it would elicit outrage in his prim parent.