Richard was not sleeping well and, lying alone in the downy bed, he had too much time to brood. Although he was demonstrating his administration abilities in the council and had won support from many members—at least he thought he had, he was unsure of himself. As a northerner, he was looked upon as an outsider in London, and he was doubtful whom to trust. All smiled and nodded, appearing acquiescent to his demands, but how much was fawning, he could not tell. It seemed to Richard that his northerners were more plain speaking and did not dissemble nor put on airs like the courtiers who had surrounded Edward.

Richard was so different from his affable, backslapping brother that the council, for its part, was wary of him. But he was optimistic that by showing good judgement and listening well, he would win the skeptics to his side. Unbeknownst to Richard, several of the barons had been shocked when, a few years before, a report had filtered to them that he had sided with a man of York—a yeoman—in a judicial dispute with one of the northern lords over land rights. Richard had found the baron guilty and fined him heavily. “If he takes the word of a commoner over a fellow nobleman,” Lord Stanley had remarked to Will, “what does our rank protect?”

One sleepless night, after going over the day’s events for the third time, he turned to where Anne should have been lying. I miss you, my dear wife, he thought, and in that moment he made up his mind to call for Anne. He needed her, and he hoped he could persuade her to leave Ned in safety at Middleham. After all, she deserved to be with him at the coronation.

A gray drizzle greeted the small procession of riders as they entered the city from the north, and Anne was glad she was on horseback as she watched the townsfolk teetering on their pattens picking their way through the mud. The damp did not suit her, and her persistent cough had worsened since leaving Barnet earlier in the day. Of course, Anne had been to London before with her father during her childhood, but it had been many years since she had been persuaded to leave her beloved Yorkshire for this god-forsaken, overcrowded, and stinking city.