The countess now turned her gaze on Richard’s young bastard John, and she frowned. No wonder God was displeased with Richard, she thought. She had been insulted on Anne’s behalf to learn of his liaison with a common peasant that had produced this boy and the beautiful Katherine, now one of Anne’s own ladies. The countess saw them as a sad reminder to Anne that she had failed to give Richard more children. Sighing, she climbed up stiffly onto the ramparts, inhaling the sweet April scent of flowering thyme from the meadows below. How peaceful it all was here, she thought, and sent up a quick ave that tranquility would last.

But all was not peaceful in Richard’s office next to the great hall. The news the messenger had brought was devastating: the king was dead.

Richard paced up and down along the same tiles that Warwick had worn down, his mouth set in a grim line in his pinched face. Francis and Rob watched him anxiously, and Anne, attempting to stop his pacing and calm him, was brushed off. The messenger in the Hastings’ livery was still on his knees but had backed himself into a corner fearing the duke of Gloucester’s ire.

Richard turned suddenly and proceeded to loudly berate the poor man: “How is this possible? He was only forty! How did he die? ‘A cold,’ you say? You lie! No one dies from a cold. How long was he ill?”

“’Tis all in the m…missive, my lord,” the man stuttered and bowed himself away.

As though frozen, Richard stood holding the letter from Hastings, his mind reeling. “Perhaps he was poisoned,” he suddenly posited. “Who would want him dead? Louis of France!” he answered his own question, preposterous though it was. “This will mean war,” he shouted. At this point, his legs were visibly trembling and had Francis not pushed a stool behind him, he might have fallen to his knees. He reached out for Anne, and as she ran to hold him, Rob quietly indicated to Francis that they should leave the room.

Once the couple was alone, Richard indulged his grief. As is human at the loss of a loved one, he could remember only the magnificent, golden king of his youth, the valiant soldier, and the generous big brother, and he could not imagine his world without Edward. At that moment, he forgot all of his brothers faults, including the heinous deed Edward had demanded of him that lived on in his nightmares.