Richard could not tell if the young king was aware or not that this day of triumphant entry into London was to have been his coronation day. Richard chose not to remind him. The lad greeted the flowers flung, the excited cheering, and the pealing bells with gracious smiles, waves, and handfuls of coins tossed among the thousands of well-wishers along the Chepe. Any misgivings he may have had about his unexpected escort was hidden in the perfectly polished facade he had been taught to show in public during his upbringing at Ludlow. Richard was impressed; the little he had seen of him, Edward had the makings of a good king.

Richard gave Buckingham the honor of leading the procession and thus could not see the puffed-up young duke smiling and waving as though he were king. He blew kisses to the women who hung from upper-story windows and was more than generous with his seemingly unlimited store of farthings. Behind him, carrying an upright sword, was York Herald, his surcote emblazoned with the late king’s rose en soleil. Richard well remembered the awkward tension of his father’s faux pas all those years ago. It had not helped York’s cause then. He must be careful as protector, he thought, not to behave like a king.

The lord mayor, with the aldermen, burgesses, and members of the guilds, met the procession at the widest point in the large cobbled thoroughfare by the Chepe Cross. Forming colorful blocks of scarlet and blue among the drab browns and grays of the common folk, the leaders of London threw back their hoods and knelt in unison to swear an oath of fealty to their sovereign.

Then a fanfare of trumpets caused a hush in the crowd, and Richard dismounted and knelt before Edward. He had chosen this moment to swear his own oath to Edward in front of the greatest number as possible of the young king’s subjects. Already Richard had heard rumblings that his wresting of the king from and arrest of his guardian smacked of a power play. He wanted to squash those false rumors. What did they think he would do? Take the crown for himself? “’Tis the last thing I want,” he had told Francis when the whisper had reached him at Barnet the day before. “‘I have to play God betimes,’ King Henry once told me, and that the responsibility was too great for one man. I have never forgotten it.” Except for his Maker, Richard had never told a soul that he had played God once.

“I swear to you on my life that I shall be faithful to you as my lawful sovereign for as long as I shall live, God save Your Grace,” Richard declared in a loud voice.