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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WHEN RICHARD PLANTAGENET was eight, his father and brother rode off to battle and never came back. It was a cold December in Wales, snow falling around Ludlow Castle where they lived, and he remembered how the utter denial had frozen him to all forms of existing interaction.
Bess had sobbed, Meg had stormed off, George had screamed his vengeance, and Ned had marched off to battle; but Richard? Richard's first thought had been that his father simply couldn't be dead, because he had promised to come back. He had ruffled Richard's hair the night before he and Edmund had gone, told him to be brave, and left with the vow that they would soon see each other. Father had never before gone back on an oath. Why, then, would he go back on this?
The other matter was Richard's mother. Duchess Cecily, as cold and brittle as the grey Welsh sky outside, had torn apart the missive that had informed them of father and Ed's murder, donned her riding habit and left the castle, even with the blizzard hampering her horse. She was not seen for the rest of the day, Richard's siblings growing frantic in her absence, until she finally returned, late at night, wet seemingly down to her very bones. She had been grim, had not spoken a word, simply gathered her youngest son in her arms, sweeping him off with her. That night, for the first time in years, she bathed him herself, stoked the fire in his chambers, and stayed with him, caressing his hair until he fell asleep.
"They cannot be gone. Father promised they would come back!" Richard remembered thinking, weeks after they had received that fateful news.
"When we come back, Dickon, our future will be certain." The Duke of York had said, ruffling his youngest's hair. "The throne will soon be ours, as will its power. That is a great responsibility, for power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you understand what that means?"
