The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III Read Online Free PDF Page B

measuring in her look; he was frightened by it without exactly knowing why.
The Queen was now looking at his mother. "Since your husband and your sons March and Rutland have so courageously fled the consequences of their treachery, it remains for you, Madame, to stand witness in their stead. Mark you well what price we exact from those disloyal to the crown."
Cecily's response was both immediate and unexpected. She stepped in front of Marguerite's glossy ebony mare.
"These people are good people, God-fearing people, loyal to their King. They owe Your Grace no debt of disloyalty, I do assure you."
"Madame, you bar my path," Marguerite said softly.
Richard saw her leather riding crop cut the air above his head. The mare lunged forward, and for a moment of heartstopping horror, he thought his mother would fall beneath the animal's hooves. She'd seen enough of Marguerite's face to be forewarned, however, and sprang clear in time, kept on her feet by the most alert of Somerset's soldiers.
Richard brushed past the soldier, pressed against his mother; George had already reached her. She was trembling and for a moment leaned against George as if he were a man grown.
"Send my sons from the village," she said huskily. "I do implore Your Grace. . . . You, too, are a mother."
Marguerite had turned in the saddle. Now she jerked at the reins,
    guiding the mare back toward the cross. "Yes, I am a mother. My sot was born six years ago today ...
and almost from the day of his birth there have been those who would deny his birthright, those who dared say that my Edouard is not the true son of my husband, the King. And you do know as well as I, Madame, the man most responsible for such vile slanders . . . Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
Warwick . . . your nephew, Madame! Your nephew!"
This last came out in a hiss, in a surge of scalding fury, followed by a burst of French, too fast and furious to be decipherable. Pausing for breath she looked down in silence at the ashen woman and fear-frozen children Very slowly and deliberately, she removed one of her riding gloves finely stitched Spanish leather furred with sable. She saw Cecily Neville raise her chin, saw Somerset grin, knew they both expected her to strike Cecily across the face with it. She flung it, instead, in the dust at
Cecily's feet.
"I want this town to learn what befalls those who give support to traitors. See to it, my lord Somerset,"
she said shortly, and not waiting for his response, brought her riding crop down again upon her mare's flanks wheeling it about in an eye-catching display of showy horsemanship and then swinging back down
Broad Street, at a pace to send soldiers scattering from her path.
A girl was screaming. The sound washed over Richard in chilling waves, set him to trembling. There was so much terror in her cries that he felt a sick relief when the screams became muffled, more indistinct, and at last, ceased altogether. He swallowed, kept his eyes averted from the direction of the churchyard, where the girl's screams came from.
The wind shifted suddenly, brought to him the acrid odor of burning flesh. More and more houses were being put to the torch, and the flames had spread to an adjoining pigsty, trapping several of the unfortunate animals within. Mercifully, the cries of the dying pigs could no longer be heard, for the agonized squealing of the doomed creatures had sickened him. He'd seen animals butchered for beef, had once even been taken by Edward and Edmund on a September stag hunt. But this was different; this was a world gone mad.
A world in which men were prodded up the streets like cattle, hemp ropes dangling about their necks. A
world in which soldiers stripped looted shops for timber to erect a gallows before the guild hall. A world in which the younger son of the town clerk had been clubbed and left for dead in the middle of Broad
Street. From the cross, Richard could still see the body. He tried not to look at it; the clerk's son had helped him to