Despite Signor Vicente’s ability to create a lightweight harness, Richard’s mailed feet were also mired in the soggy ground, and he desperately tried to free them. Defending himself from bills and halberds, he whirled his sword in a circle and caught one billman in the face, who screamed and fell back. Richard finally managed to stagger out of the quagmire but, as always when he fought on foot, his compromised lungs began to play him false, and he could hear his own panting magnified inside the helmet. I can’t breathe, he thought panicked. Lift the visor, you fool! Goddamn this vile body of mine to Hell.

A sharp pain penetrated his jaw and he tasted blood. Someone jerked his helmet off, having cut through the chinstrap with a rondel dagger. At last he could breathe, but by then he felt blows to his protected back and one to his head. How many were there around him? He could not count, but his sword blade never stopped swooping and flashing.

He was not sure when he realized that he was going to die, but when he saw the blue and white badge of William Stanley on one of his assailants, he knew he was betrayed and the day was lost. With great effort he cried, “Traitor!” just as the same dagger was plunged through the top of his skull, and he could not help but scream in pain. He fell to his knees, blood streaming down his face, and turned his face to heaven.

“I am betrayed,” he gasped, feeling yet another blow to his head and, now afraid, noticed the light was blurring and fading around him. “God has betrayed me!” he seethed. “He has taken everything from me,” and when he heard White Syrie scream, he cried, “even my horse!” A weightlessness began to engulf him and he could no longer hold up his head; it felt full to bursting. Is this the end? he wondered, blood gushing from his ears, nose and mouth. Take me, O God, take me now. I am the final sacrifice, and I can bear no more. Father, I pass the cup…

Mercifully, Richard never saw the halberd raised behind him that sliced through the base of his skull, dealing the death blow. He fell forward onto the sacred soil of the kingdom he had tried so honorably to defend all his short life, and his noble heart stopped. He had been king of England for a mere two years.