The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III by Sharon Kay Penman

is right now, but we've no reason to think him dead. Your father, child, is a man who knows how to see to his own welfare. Moreover, had harm come to him, we'd have heard by now. Here . . . take my handkerchief and tell me how you came to be here, in my sons' bedchamber."
"I wanted to see Mama, to ask if Bella spoke true. But her ladies said she was in bed, that her head hurt, and said, right sharp, that I was to go back to bed. But I know why her head hurts, Aunt Cecily. She was weeping. All day, she was weeping! Why was she weeping . . . 'cept that Papa was dead, like Bella said. ..."
Anne's voice, muffled against Cecily's breast, now grew more certain. "So I came to wake up Dickon.
But he was gone, Aunt Cecily, he and George were gone! I waited for him to come back, and then I
heard you and got scared and hid in the garderobe, and please, Aunt Cecily, don't scold me, but why isn't Dickon here and why did Bella say Papa was dead?"
"Bella is fearful, Anne, and when people are afraid, they often confuse what they dread with what they know to be true. As for your cousins . . . Richard and George have had to go away from here for a while. They didn't know they were leaving, had no chance to say farewell to you and Bella. It was sudden, you see. ..."
"Away? Away where?"
"Far away, Anne. Very far. . . ." She sighed, shaping a simple explanation to enable Anne to understand where Burgundy was, when the little girl made a soft choking sound and then wailed, "Dead! He's dead, isn't he? Dead like Grandpapa!"
Cecily stared at her, appalled. "Oh, Anne, my dearest child, no! No, Anne, no. My God."
Anne had begun to squirm; Cecily had unconsciously tightened her embrace. Now she brushed her lips to the child's forehead, said with
    quiet and compelling force, "Anne, listen to me. People do go away without dying. You must believe that, dearest. Your cousin Richard is not dead. He will come back ... as will your father. I do promise you.
With that, she pulled the coverlets back. "Would you like to sleep here in Richard's room tonight?" And was both touched and faintly amused when Anne at once brightened at the prospect.
The little girl had proven that autumn to be a source of considerable embarrassment to Cecily's youngest son; easily the most sensitive of her children, he was genuinely reluctant to cause hurt to the adoring little cousin who was, from the superior vantage point of his eight years, a mere baby. Cecily suspected, moreover, that Richard was secretly flattered by Anne's unabashed admiration, and she'd noticed that he was willing enough to play with Anne if there were no boys available as playmates or if George was elsewhere. But he clearly had no liking for the amused glances of the adults as Anne trailed him in loving pursuit, and still less did he care for the merciless teasing he was subjected to by George, who'd infuriated and discomfited Richard only that week by announcing loudly at supper that he meant to name his pet turtledoves Dickon and Anne.
While memories could comfort, they could also rend without pity. This was not the night to dwell upon past remembrances; Cecily knew herself to be too vulnerable. She reached down to pull the blankets over Anne, and stopped in midmovement, staring down at a threadbare woolen blanket that looked strangely out of place among the other coverlets piled upon the bed.
The blanket, once a vivid sun-yellow and now a drab mustard color belonged to Richard. In one of his few overt concessions to childdhood frailties, Richard insisted upon having that particular blanket on his bed, would not go to sleep without it. How and why it had come to mean so much to him, Cecily did not know, somehow had never found the time to ask, merely trying to see that it was laundered occasionally.
Even George, who was too quick, for Cecily's liking, to jeer at the weaknesses of others no longer baited his brother about that blanket, having once provoked Richard into a wild and uncharacteristic rage when he