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something more brooding and sullen. He settled to a slow trot, and then a walk, soothed as ever by the motion of his horse, that rhythmic movement of muscle and bone. He could feel his horse’s ribs moving against his knees.
    He had learned in childhood to suppress his rage. Shortly after his father had been executed he had been sent to stay in the noisy and burgeoning household of the Earl of Westmorland. It was the first of several visits to the castle of Raby, before he went to live there. No one had spoken of his father’s disgrace, though he had always been a little set apart. Solid and taciturn, he had made few friends, though some of the earl’s children had been roughly his own age. He had recoiled from kindness, endured cruelty with a stoic silence and learned to be alert and more observant than he seemed.
    On that first visit, he had seen, by chance, the earl’s new baby daughter. He had somehow evaded his nurse, the other children and their tutor, and was trying to find his room, when a door opened very softly. He saw a maid leaving a chamber, carrying a small bundle. He hung back, but she smiled at him. ‘Would you like to see?’ she said, and sat on a stool to one side of the door.
    Cautiously, he approached the linen bundle, which mightalmost have been laundry, apart from a tiny fist that waved defiantly in the air.
    ‘Her name is Cecily,’ the maid said, and when he didn’t respond she said, ‘What do you think?’ But he didn’t know what he thought. The baby’s face was somewhat blotchy, its eyes tightly closed and its mouth a small bud, continuously working, now puckered and pursed, now stretched as if to cry, then folded in on itself so that the lips entirely disappeared. The little arm waved erratically as though summoning aid. The maid touched the baby’s fist and it opened promptly, grasping, the fingers splayed wide like the rays of a star. Richard’s own fingers moved and he touched the baby’s palm, which was so soft, like wrinkled silk. At once, the baby’s fingers curled round his own, and in that moment something changed. He had the sudden, keen sense of being her one connection in this alien and shifting world. He smiled, astonished, and the baby clung on as though she had no intention of ever letting go.
    That was thirty years ago, of course, but the little girl had not outgrown her attachment to him. On subsequent visits she had toddled after him where possible, so that he was forced to discourage her at times, though secretly he looked for her when she wasn’t there. At the age of three she had loudly declared her intention of marrying him, and everyone had laughed. By the time she was nine, however, most of his titles and estates had been restored to him, and they were betrothed.
    Now he was riding back to her as though drawn by an invisible rope, seeking restoration in her eyes, so that his heart could begin to heal. She would come to meet him, and her eyes would seek his and he would not need to explain anything, not at first. In her eyes he would find a sense of connection in this alien and shifting world.

The Queen Speaks Unwisely
     
     
This King Henry was chaste and pure from the beginning of his days. He eschewed all licentiousness in word or deed … and neither when he espoused the most noble Lady Margaret … did he use his wife unseemly, but with all honesty and gravity … this prince made a covenant with his eyes that they should never look unchastely upon any woman. Hence it happened once, that at Christmas time a certain great lord brought before him a dance or show of young ladies with bared bosoms who were to dance in that guise before the king, perhaps to prove him, or to entice his youthful mind. But the king … angrily averted his eyes, turned his back upon them, and went out to his chamber saying:
Fy, fy, for shame, forsothe ye be to blame.
     
    John Blacman
     
     
    The queen had told no one about the problem that had come to preoccupy her