“At least he is buried in hallowed ground,” the man had told his sacrist, before the short ceremony. “The poor man at least deserves that. But we cannot afford to delay or this new king may change his mind and throw him into the Soar. I did not dare commission a coffin or shroud for fear of reprisals. Henry wanted no expense and ordered me to simply dig a hole in some isolated spot within the grounds. I could not bring myself to obey that uncharitable command. King Richard gave a grant to this monastery on his progress, and he was a godly man, for all his faults.”

Looking about him for eavesdroppers, the sacrist whispered: “I did hear the new king is so afeared his claim is weak, he has named the twenty-first day of August as the first of his reign.” He looked sadly at the lifeless form being laid in the grave. “Had Richard lived but lost the battle, he would have been executed as a traitor. ’Tis as well the man died bravely in battle.”

The abbot nodded. “Thanks be to God he did not live to see his own crown set upon Henry’s head by the perfidious Lord Stanley. It had rolled under a bush, they say. Now, there was a traitor.” He moved to the head of the grave and nodded to the brothers carrying spades. “It is time.”

A soft chanting from the choir monks and the gentle sound of dirt falling rhythmically into the grave accompanied the abbot’s prayer, his dulcet baritone intoning:

Te, Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus…. hear our prayers for your servant Richard, whom you have summoned out of this world. Forgive him his sins and failings and grant him a place of refreshment, light and peace….

And thus, while King Henry rode through the fickle, cheering Leicester crowds to give thanks in nearby St. Martin’s Church, Richard Plantagenet’s body disappeared clod by dusty clod into the Greyfriars earth to lie undisturbed and unclaimed for five hundred years.

Epilogue

Epilogue

I am not ashamed to say that I cried happy tears when I heard the news that DNA taken from bones found under a car park in September 2012 proved to be Richard’s. It had taken ten years, a team of archeologists, a lot of money and a frisson of intuition from a determined Scotswoman to find Richard’s grave at last. Now, with DNA technology, the identity of the bones could be verified.