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LADY MARGARET BEAUFORT STANLEY, September 1485“Lady Stanley,” greets King Richard. She watches exhaustion roll over his face like a wave and feels no surprise. He wants to turn her away, of course: she knows this, but he can’t, and she knows that, too. While her son has risen against him, her husband supported Richard, instead, an act which helped turn the tide of the Battle of Bosworth in Richard’s favor. “To what do I owe this honor?”Margaret’s smile is taut and she folds her hands before her. “What are your plans for my son?”Richard sighs, letting out a held-in breath almost as if this surprises him, but it can’t. Henry’s fate is the only thing which could lure her here, now, given the situation. “He will be tried,” says the King. “And, no doubt, found guilty of treason.”“He is a boy,” says Margaret.“He is not,” says the King.The King’s solar is dark tonight, lit by few candles, and Margaret half-imagines she’s keeping him awake past his intentions. Good, she thinks. Make him impatient to be rid of me; I’ll not go till my boy is safe. “He is my boy.” You’ve lost one of your own, she thinks. Do not think to take mine from me. But there are rumors, swirling rumors, that Richard is responsible for the death of his own beloved brother’s sons. Margaret’s teeth set on edge but she schools her face to show nothing of her fears.Richard nods, runs a hand through his tousled hair. “He is a traitor, madam, who rose up against me, invading England with the intent to steal my crown. I have executed good men for less than he has dared. How could I possibly spare him? He nearly killed me! Yes, madam, I very nearly lost my life at Bosworth Field. Were it not for your husband’s interference, I might even now be moldering in the earth. If I do not punish him, others will attempt the same. England will never have peace.”Margaret tilts her head. “You’re right to say you’ve tried severity before. You’ve also tried mercy. Despite each of these steps, however, more pretenders always rise up,” she points out, stepping closer. “These tactics are tired. It is time to try another.”“What do you suggest?”“I think, Your Grace, we may come to a most pleasing arrangement.” HENRY TUDOR, EARL OF RICHMONDI had meant to end up in the Tower, someday, he muses, wryly. I succeeded there, at least. Henry reaches up, tracing his fingerpad across the edge of the window’s edge, and laughs aloud. He’d meant to spend the night before his coronation here, rather than the night before his execution but, at least, he is here. His Tower prison is not so uncomfortable, he supposes, as his Uncle Jasper’s very likely is. Even now that it has doomed him, Henry’s royal English blood counts for something, it seems: a century or two ago, this very chamber might even have been considered a fine apartment. Uncle Jasper’s royal French and Welsh blood, however, do not seem to count for much at all, here. Twice, Henry has gone to the door and called out, hoping to hear his uncle respond, but he has heard nothing. Uncle Jasper has not been housed here. Henry prays he is not dead.This is worse, Henry decides tersely, picking at the window’s edge with his fingernail. Pebbles and stones tumble down. It is worse waiting to die than waiting to fight. At least, in the coming battle, there had been a chance of survival – now, there is none. Here, he is trapped and here there shall be no quarter.Henry jumps from the windowsill, approaching one wall. He has a small stone in hand, won from the window edge, and he decides he will carve something, but he needs to know where to begin. The Welsh dragon, of course, crowned as it ought to have been. He laughs. His one chance at safety – that very crown – has gone up now in dragonfire and this is the closest he shall ever come to calling it his own. Henry gnaws at his lip. Yes, his dragon’s fiery breath will wreathe the wall in flame and he will draw warmth from the conflagration before he goes under the axe.Henry crouches, decides to start with the head, long and noble like a steed, yet fierce and mighty like a lion. Scrape, scrape, scrape, Henry watches as the vermillion eyes appear in the stone, the long-clawed arms and leathery wings. I should have known, he thinks as he carves at the long spear-like tail. I should have known that St. George will always slay the dragon. It’s long work, slow, but he enjoys it, enjoys knowing that he’s doing something, leaving a mark. History, if it remembers him at all, will say his name in infamy, but here, whoever walks here, will see his handiwork. Fellow traitors and liars and thieves and criminals, he thinks. And rebels who would be king. He’d meant dragonfire to forge a crown, but it had been melted down, instead.Beneath the crowned dragon, he scrawls his name into the rock, working through his signature one last time. I shall put my name to it, he thinks. And then I shall never regret my name again.His name has dogged him through his life: opening doors to strange and foreign lands, while summoning destroyers at the same time. He’d had another vision of life and he’d invaded England to see it through. He’d failed to take the kingdom by storm at Bosworth Field, but he was proud, nevertheless. He’d done what others dared not do and despite every risk and every trial that had come his way, he’s come this far. And he’s made it here, he’s made it to the Tower: that can never now be taken from him. All his life, his enemies have taken and taken and taken from him. Now they will take all he has left to give: his very life, but they cannot strip him of his own hard-won achievements. Those are his and safe in the past, now, where they can never be undone.Construction is being done on a scaffold. Even as he carves and carves, he can hear the unrelenting work and he can catch the glimpse of it from the corner of his window if he leans as far as he can against it. He’d meant a scaffold to be built in Westminster Abbey for his coronation, but one way or another, the English are even now building him a scaffold and his wry smile returns, turns, and sneers as he leans harder into the carving. Henry, he writes. R. Coronation or no, he is a king by blood and by name and he is a king, even, by might. He has led an army, he has been blessed by God in a high cathedral and sworn lofty oaths as a king must do. It is only the throne that is lacking. He will never see it and he will never meet the woman he swore to wed. He may see Uncle Jasper again at their execution, but, doubtless, he will never see his mother again. Better for her if he does not. Henry’s teeth clamp together and he loops the R so that it curls into the dragon’s flames, his regal aspirations upon a pyre of hope.Henry turns away from the wall as he hears the tramp of boots outside. No doubt, he thinks, his midday meal is on its way and Henry rises to greet it. He does nothing to conceal his scowl, glaring towards the door as it swings open. RICHARD IIIRichard studies his would-be usurper. Henry’s eyes are intent but his expression aloof and Richard can’t resist the label of proud that slithers into his brain. Silently, he rebukes himself in his lack of charity. Richard ought not to blame anyone, after all, for that. He, himself, half-imagines pride to be one of his own virtues, perhaps, or else his greatest flaw, but its presence cannot be ignored.The two young men stare at one another for a time. Richard knows he, himself, is not much to look at. Aged beyond his thirty-two years, grief and strain have stolen much of his natural looks and, with his right shoulder a touch higher than the left (though he is careful to conceal this as much as possible beneath his wardrobe), he is not so tall as his brothers grew to be. Still, the echoes of what have been lurk on his face: strong features that, in another life, might have blossomed into the kind of personal beauty possessed by his eldest brother, Edward IV, still whisper below the pallid surface of his flesh. His eyes are pale and fiercely intelligent, and he remains tall in a crowd, if not amongst his brothers. Yet, his face is lined with nearly three decades worth of worry, making him appear some years older than he really is. He does not conceal this. He has survived every challenge he has faced and he wishes the world to see. He wishes, too, that Henry had seen this before he’d made his voyage. Perhaps he would have stayed in Brittany, forever, and let Richard alone, if he had known. What might have been, however, is no matter. Henry is here, now, and now he has seen.“Do you know me?” asks Richard, meeting the grey-green eyes that study him so intently. Richard’s measure is being taken, but he has already won, and so it makes no difference to him what Henry might believe.Henry, himself, is the striking sort. Handsome is perhaps not the word that Richard might employ, but there is some attractive quality in him that arrests attention. Yet, his trials show in both his face and stance. He was born the Earl of Richmond and has been hunted for his claim, most of his life, exiled and harried across Europe by Richard’s brother, the late King Edward. Henry has schooled his face to show nothing, the way he stands reveals he’s often had nothing to show for himself save himself.Richard can empathize well enough with that and he imagines that this may be the reason Richard can read it there in his bearing: a language between exiles, alone. Physically, too, Henry resembles Richard, somewhat – they are distant cousins, after all – his jaw and chin and nose prominent, his brow high. He has thin lips, like Richard’s, but his mouth his wider; grey eyes like Richard but they are more green than blue. Henry is twenty-eight and looks it. He is tall and slender, but well built. Richard isn’t so surprised that his determination carried him across the sea to greet Richard at Bosworth. Henry’s glare is the unswerving sort. Henry is taking Richard’s measure as much as Richard is taking his.“No,” says Henry, finally. “I do not know you.”“We have already met,” observes Richard, taking a seat. “Though the circumstances,” he adds, allowing the irony to flow through his voice as, once again, he pictures Bosworth Field, one more bloody field to haunt him, taunt him, remind him of death. “Were, themselves, quite distracting.” He throws up a practiced hand, dismissing the guards, watches Henry’s careful eye observe, reflection flickering there. Henry looks back to him and Richard gestures towards a fresh carving of a dragon burning away the name Henry R in the wall behind Tudor. “Tell me of your graffiti there.”Cross-armed, Henry turns to look behind him. His shoulders hunch slightly, relax again, and he turns towards Richard with a stony visage. A token, thinks Richard. I was not meant to see. HENRY TUDORHenry glances away, angry at himself for the monument he has made. He’d carved it out for those who would witness it after his death. He’d not meant it to be seen while he lived. It is a message from a dead man, but a show of weakness in a living one. “It’s nothing,” he says. “A pastime.”“That is your crest, the Welsh dragon.”“Yes,” owns Henry, drawing himself up to his full height as subtly as he can manage.“The dragon is crowned,” his interlocutor says, tone struggling towards neutrality despite the heat beneath it, stirring in his eyes. “And your name you have signed with the royal R.” The man pauses, looks closer, eyes narrowing. “But it is aflame.” He glances back towards Henry again, who pointedly looks away, annoyed.Henry does not respond; feels hateful, unexpected tears pricking in his eyes as his cheeks flame. He is soon to die. Why this interrogation, now?The man glances towards the door. “Do you mean to make further treason against the king?”“How could I?” bites out Henry. “Even now, they build my scaffold.” He holds up a finger. “Listen. Do you hear it?”The man’s expression is strange, analytical, but savoring of something, too, as if he has bitten his own tongue or sucked on something sour and Henry assesses it quickly, attempting to determine for himself what it means. Indecision, he thinks. Or pity? He hates that thought and clenches a fist. Of all the human sympathies in the world, pity is the one he wants least. “But, if you could,” he says. “Would you?”“Do you ask me if I wish to die?” The words tint the silence, coloring it in cloudy swathes of sickly green and Henry looks away.The stranger nods. “Yes,” he murmurs. “I suppose these are the options as they appear. But if there were a third…”Henry shoots a withering glance, reading the man again. He laughs suddenly, turning to look out the window. Ah, he thinks, chastising himself for the fool. This is a negotiation, not an interrogation. His heart squeezes against his ribcage and Henry feels the pressure of a smile at the corner of his lips but he pushes it back and fixes the man with a carefully blank expression. But what is to be the prize? “Explain,” he commands in a clipped tone.“Very well,” replies the man, shifting in his seat into a more relaxed position. “Your mother has made a compelling request for your release, one the king is tempted to accept.”Tears crowd Henry’s eyelids, threatening to fall, and arriving before the emotions can: those delivered at first only in a sudden hollow that seems to form in his gut, opening wide like a gushing torrent. He feels unsteady on his feet, pushing the tears back, but riveted to the spot nonetheless, and he tries to swallow but his mouth is dry.“You jest,” he says, half-whispering, though he’d meant to bark. He is winded and wants to step back and away.He has never seen his mother beg and the picture of it guts him. He almost hates the idea of release, suddenly, because she has shamed herself for him and because this, too, is another uncertainty and that much, at least, he’d finally escaped, but he clings to it, as well, stiff-fingered and galled. He clings to dear life.“I do not.” The stranger stands. “Pray, answer my question.”Henry swallows again, makes more of a success at it, and chooses. I will live, he decides. I will live, whatever it takes. He’s been here, before, he realizes. The trappings had confounded him, but this scenario no different, now, than the rest has been. He can slip past death, angle around it and maneuver the situation how he likes. He’s been taken unawares, and rues this, but he can still take charge of this. “If His Majesty means to extend the hand of peace to me, I shall not turn away from him or his mercy and kindness. I shall be his man, if it comes to that, and obey all his commandments and strictures as his loving and loyal cousin.”The man folds both his hands behind his back. “Will you make lawful and holy oaths to this effect in the eyes of all?”“I shall.”“And what of your earlier oaths? Sworn across the Channel against the lawful King of England?”“I hold all but one oath fulfilled,” replied Henry. “As, in each case but one, I have essayed fiercely for their achievement and, by these terms, though having failed, I have fulfilled my oath to uphold those goals.”“Which have you not tried?”Henry swallowed. “My oath to wed the Princess Elizabeth.”“The Lady Elizabeth,” the man corrects, wearily. “Will you not give her up?”“I expect she shall do the like to me. If I ask her and she refuses me, the thing is done for I have sallied forth boldly as promised, but I cannot imagine that an attainted traitor might tempt her.”“No,” agreed the man. “Why do you admit to me that you still mean to try for the Lady Elizabeth?”“To display my honesty.”“Hm.”“I bid you tell His Grace, my liege lord, all. I’ve not yet done with my life and I’ve no desire to lose it, there being another way. Therefore, I shall do as His Grace commands me. I pray you will convey to him all that I have said and assure him of my repentance. There is, however, something else I wish you to say to him.”The man arches surprised brows. “That being…?”“I desire that, should he spare me, he show the same clemency to my men and crave, most especially, for mercy upon my uncle, Jasper, and Roland de Velville, all these men having acted only for love of me and shall, therefore, make no trouble if I am spared.”“I know Jasper Tudor. He is the surviving half-brother of the late mad king, Henry VII. You would have the king spare him?”“I would.”“And if the king should choose to show you mercy but not your uncle or your young friend?”Henry found the other man’s eyes. “I could not forgive him.”The man studied him acutely, grey eyes shifting as they focused on each feature of his face, settling again on his eyes. There was a weight in his gaze and the man nodded, slowly. “I have to admire your loyalty,” he said, finally. “Particularly at such great risk to your own life, when you have just declared that you intend to do all in your power to save it.”“It is not in my power to abandon those who could not abandon me, even for their own good.”A slow nod and the man’s smile was sad. “We would each be lucky ever to possess such loyalty from or to another human soul.” He paused. “I asked you of your crest, allow me to share mine. It was the boar but, since the death of my brother, is turned to the lion of England.”Henry dropped immediately to his knees, bowing his head in humble submission. “Your Grace.”“Mark me, well, Henry Tudor,” says King Richard. “I have a long memory and I shall not forget any of this. You have tried to kill me and take my crown and it has not gone well for you. If ever you cross me again, I shall not show you clemency.” He pauses. “Today, however, I shall place my hope in you.” He went to the cell door and the gaolers on the other side opened it. “Release him,” he commanded. “Henry, you are now to be my royal cupbearer. You will taste my cup for poison, both my own wine and that of my most highly esteemed guests, and humble yourself to our service. Further, you will show to me the same loyalty you have offered for your uncle and friend whose live I will spare though, for now, your uncle shall remain in the Tower. De Velville I shall send home to his mother’s family abroad. As to your uncle, I shall have him moved to these quarters that he might be made more comfortable.” The king nods to the gaolers and strides away, calling behind him. “Make it so.” ELIZABETH OF YORK, Michaelmas 1485“They say the king has a new cupbearer,” observes Cecily, leaning in close to Lizzie, her golden hair splaying across her shoulder to nestle with Lizzie’s copper locks. “Can you believe it?”“It must be very hard,” says Lizzie, gnawing her lip. “To have had hope of processing here as king and, instead, to arrive in chains.”“Well, he’s not in chains, anymore. How could he pour our wine?” Cecily sighs softly and sits back. “You only sympathize with him because you might have been the Queen beside him in that triumphal procession.”Their mother sits beside them, rigid, and Lizzie casts a quick glance in her direction. She has not heard Cecily, thankfully, and Lizzie catches Cecily’s hand. “You mustn’t say such things and certainly not here! We must all forget everything we know.”“It’s not very brave,” sighs Cecily.“It’s not about being brave, Cee,” pleads Lizzie. “It’s about survival.”“Uncle Richard murdered our brothers, Lizzie. I don’t care if he knows we all plotted against him with Lady Stanley to have a new king. I don’t care!”Elizabeth Woodville’s look is venom. “You should,” she growls and Cecily glances down at her lap again. Everyone lapses into silence.This evening is to be held the Michaelmas celebrations and, therefore, the first large public outing since Bosworth Field – for both the monarch that is and the monarch that may have been. The entire court waits, breathless, to find out just what the king’s new policies might be, from here, and, perhaps even more so, to see the face of the man who was nearly king.To Lizzie’s surprise, Henry Tudor appears without remonstrance or spectacle, simply a part of the ongoing festivities, rather than a showcase for the futility of rebellion. He pours, first, a draught into the king’s goblet and he samples it for poison. Everyone around seems to hold their breath. Decisively, Henry places the cup before the king, again. He moves on to the next guest.Lizzie watches the wine flow as though she were watching the events of Bosworth Field: red running as a rivulet, stopped only to flow again, red gushing by Henry’s Lancastrian-red hand. He’d paid in blood, already, the price of the crown and, still, he has not won it. He swore to be her husband; their mothers colluded to bring him here; he fought. Was all the bloodshed not, therefore, in some sense her own? Lizzie glances away again. She can’t watch the wine flow any longer.She wants to get up, to flee from this room, this scene. All around her crowd the people she has always known, laughing at the festivities and eating and drinking and eating and drinking as though they do not know this exhibition for the sham it is. Everything has changed. It ought to be her father presiding over Michaelmas, as always, with her mother at his side. Her siblings, Mary and Ned and Dickon ought to be here, as well, not dead and gone. Uncle Richard ought to have a seat of honor, as the girls ought to have, with his wife and son. Yes, ghosts line these halls: even the woman her father is supposed to have married seems to lurk in the shadows to shame Lizzie’s entire family and to damn her father from beyond the grave. Lizzie and her sisters are turned from princesses to bastards and her mother from a queen to a whore.Around her, everyone laughs and participates, but Lizzie stares on and on and on, unseeing. Suddenly, someone is standing at her shoulder. Lizzie jumps and turns abruptly, arrested by a green-eyed gaze. He is standing very close, ready to pour her drink, but she doesn’t think of the wine, thinks instead of the face gazing down at her. Henry strikes her as handsome and that surprises her; she did not expected handsome. She wants to laugh at her own foolishness, but she can’t laugh just now with the way he’s looking at her, intensely, scrutinizingly. She matches his intensity with sensitivity and his scrutiny with curiosity as she searches his face in an effort to parse out what he is thinking or feeling. They might have been wed, she is sensible: she cannot think that she would mind so very much waking up someday to such a face as his. She is sensible, too, that if she had been born a boy, she might now be in his very position: a captive king as her brother once was. But, no, Henry is no more king than Lizzie is princess and in that, also, they are the same. His expression is unreadable, but he pauses for the first time in his long procession before her. She wants to say something, express some sympathy, starts to open her mouth, but he speaks, instead.“Madam,” he begins. “Do you care for refreshment?”“Oh,” she says, turns quickly to reach for her cup as he does the same. He stops; she stops, turns and looks at him, again. He lets her look, taking her chalice and pouring her red wine. That face could cut me, she thinks, If I were to touch it. All sharp angles and strong features, it was a face made to command attention. There’s nothing conventional in his looks but she likes them, yes, and, stupidly, she wonders what it might be like to kiss him. He sips her cup. She images kissing him. Coloring, slightly, she turns away and feels him move on behind her.The next guest says something to Henry as he fills the next cup; he does not respond and Lizzie doesn’t listen. She pauses, sips gingerly at her wine and begins a conversation, as she should, with the person seated beside her. The night continues as if it were any other night and she continues with it, ignoring all that’s been lost or surrendered.It’s not until later, everyone’s cups being refilled, that Henry catches her attention, again. Lizzie observes him, cautiously. He is dogged in the fulfillment of his duty, not speaking unless spoken to, flawlessly following the rigid rules of etiquette, his expression never wavering until he comes to pour his mother’s drink and even then only the whisper of a smile, the ghost of a pause, before he moves on to the next guest. Lizzie knows this must be galling – her own mother spent the morning bemoaning the scheme’s failure – but there is no trace of that in his face. He toils on without hesitation or pause.When he comes to her again, she puts a hand over her cup and shakes her head, offering up a small, quavering smile. He passes on and the moment is over. She thinks, We will get on now as though nothing has happened, no plot, no war, no marriage, but her eyes follow him, still.