Edward’s lower lip trembled, but he bravely looked Richard in the eye. “I don’t think I want to be king, uncle. All this talk of power. I don’t even know what power means. Uncle Rivers didn’t teach me about that. We learned about chivalry, poetry and how to dance. Sir Thomas taught me Latin and French, but no one taught me how to be a king.” He was close to tears now, and clearly exhausted, he blurted, “Oh, I just want to go to London and see my lady mother and my brother.”

Richard nodded. How could he tell the lad that his mother was poison? Not for the first time did he curse Edward’s stupidity for his choice of queen. “Aye, soon,” he replied. “Let me send in my friend Lord Lovell to tend to your needs. He is a good fellow and one your father liked well.”

Richard bowed and left the room.

The two messengers sent from Northampton to the council in London told very different stories of the events on the last day of April. The lord protector’s missive spoke of a perceived plot by the Woodvilles to take control of the king, and that instead he now had charge of the king and would be escorting Edward to London. He begged the lords and council to support his protectorship. His private letter to Hastings was joyfully received.

But whatever Sir Richard Grey’s squire had conveyed to Elizabeth was different enough to cause panic at Westminster. At midnight, the queen and her children gathered some belongings and ran the hundred yards across the courtyard into the sanctuary of the abbey. From there, Ellizabeth’s eldest, Dorset, sent appeals to the council and clerics to intercept Richard on the road to London and seize the king from the protector and the duke of Buckingham. As if her flight did not arouse suspicion enough, she sent Dorset, as constable, to the Tower to fetch the royal treasure, half of which had been appropriated only the day before by Elizabeth’s youngest brother, Edward, when he had sailed with his little fleet into the Channel. “For safe keeping,” Elizabeth had said after giving both sons the command. History might well ask: for whom?

All this was enough to sway those uncommitted councilors to Richard’s side, convinced the Woodvilles had effectively incriminated themselves. Certainly it was Richard’s perception of the events; the Woodvilles, however, may have seen things differently. Once Richard had thwarted her plan to secure the young king, Elizabeth’s flight into sanctuary smacked of a guilty conscience as far as Richard was concerned. She was afraid to meet me, he thought, as well she might be.