Richard lifted Anne onto the bed, spread the coverlet over her shaking body and drew the heavy curtains around her. Trembling, he knelt at his portable altar and found a prayer for the death of a child in Henry’s holy book. As he stared unseeing at the page, his anger built, until he snapped the book shut and flung it away. “I see You are not keeping Your end of the bargain, are You?” he accused the Almighty, his voice shaking. “Or will You not be satisfied until You have taken everything from me?” Another heart-wrenching sob from Anne gave fuel to his ire. “Never mind me. What about Anne? What has she ever done to displease You?” and he raised his fist and shook it at the painted crucifix on the altar. “She has done nothing, I tell you, nothing at all!”

As Anne drenched her pillow, Richard knelt by the bed and, holding her hand in his, he gave his own pitiable blessing to his beloved son. He left God out of it.

PART SIX

PART SIX

Last of the Plantagenets

O most sweet lord Jesus Christ, true God, who was sent from the bosom of the Almighty Father into the world to forgive sins, to comfort afflicted sinners, comfort the sad, and to console those in grief and distress, deign to release me from the affliction, temptation, grief, sickness, need and danger in which I stand, and give me counsel. And you, Lord, who reconciled the race of man…and who made peace between men and angels, deign to make and keep concord between me and my enemies…

Even so lord Jesus Christ, deign to free me, your servant, King Richard, from every tribulation, sorrow and trouble in which I am placed and from the plots of my enemies, and deign to send Michael the Archangel to my aid against them…

By all these things, I ask, you most sweet lord Jesus Christ, to keep me, your servant, King Richard, and defend me from all evil and from all peril present, past and to come and deliver me from all tribulations…in the name of all your goodness for which I give and return thanks, for all those gifts and goods granted me…

—The Prayer of King Richard, from his Book of Hours

Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Late Summer 1484

Despite Richard’s anger at his Maker, he tried once again to appease Him.

After burying Ned in the little chapel at Middleham, Richard and Anne wanted nothing more than to leave. The boy was imprinted on every inch of the great castle, and Anne expected him to come around a corner at any moment. So they traveled east with their court and spent July and August at Anne’s favorite castle on the cliffs of Scarborough.