The year is 1464.
The War of the Roses rages on; a great showdown between Lancaster and York.
Yet, asleep in her bed, fiery-haired Melissa Woodville dreams of splintered shields, broken swords, and the resounding screams of wounded men in the Battle...
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THE SLIGHT, TINKLING sound of spoons against delicate silver cups were the only thing breaking the silence in the Duchess Cecily's chambers that morning, the outside world closed off to the occupants by way of closed windows and shut door.
Elizabeth Plantagenet — known as "Bess" to her family — gently put her cup down on a small table and looked up at her mother, who seemed lost in thought as she twisted her wedding ring around her finger.
"She only does that when she is thinking of father, or Ed." Bess silently noted, skillfully pushing away the wave of grief that came whenever she thought of the two who had so cruelly been murdered.
Edmund, Earl of Rutland, the brother she had been closest to, had rode off to battle with father, and had never come back. It was one of the greatest griefs in her life, that the sibling she was closest to should die in as gruesome a manner as Lancastrian soldiers could have thought out. Ed — gentle, dear Ed — had been butchered, his head mounted on a spike next to their father's outside the gates of the city of York, and nothing had been quite the same after that. Mother, who clearly still grieved the loss of her darling son and beloved husband, drifted off into daydreams at times, as she had now, and Bess knew she was thinking of them, of where they'd be today if Margaret of Anjou hadn't ordered their murder.
Margaret of Anjou.
The name rang inside her head as clearly as the tolling of a church bell. She could not quite tamp down the rising feeling of fury she had boiling inside of her, for the French queen was the most to blame for father and Ed's absence today. The she-devil had, after all, been the one pulling the strings throughout the rebellion, and still would be, if allowed. As it were, she had been chased back to France with her mad son, and she would do well to remain there if Bess had anything to say about it. If the two women were to meet face to face, there was a dagger waiting with Margaret of Anjou's name on it.
