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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COLD. SHE STILL felt cold. Ever since she had lost her boy, all she could feel — or rather, could not — was a dangerous numbness, each breath she took tinged with glacial fraught. She had never lost a child before, not until that horrible, horrible day; she had never had the misfortune. But now ... her life had irrevocably changed. How could she go on, tend to those children yet alive, when she knew there should have been another now with them? That five should have been six? How did anyone ever recover from this? Elizabeth did not know.
Following her husband into the royal quarters in the Tower, she felt colder still. He had come to her before Barnet, enveloped her in his arms, told her that he shared her grief, that not all was lost ... but he was different. Over the last four years, she had felt herself losing Edward; a piece of him broke away each time he took a mistress to bed, each time they birthed him a son or daughter (especially when they birthed him sons!), and she had felt apprehensive, but never in danger! He had always been captivated by her, and she — confident in her charms — knew he would always make his way back to her. But could the death of their little prince have been too much for him? Had he become too distant, too far away for her to pull him back?
Yet another thing she did not know.
"I have to go again, tonight." he stated, his back to her, as it often was these days.
She nodded, desperately trying to put on a brave face, squash the pit of dread emerging in her stomach. "You hope to capture Margaret of Anjou?"
"No. I hope to ambush her."
Elizabeth blinked. That was not the answer she had been expecting. "Ambush her? Where?"
Holding up a piece of parchment she previously had not noticed in his hands, he replied, "Tewkesbury, north of Gloucestershire."
