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

brother Edward were naturally given to physical expressions of affection. Now she hesitated, and then slipped her arm around her mother in a tentative embrace.
"Ma Mere, what is to happen to us?"
Cecily was too exhausted to lie, too heartsick to speak the truth as she feared it to be.
"I don't know," she said and sat down wearily upon the closest seat, a none-too-comfortable coffer-chest. "I do believe that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life . . . putting those children on that ship. So young they looked . . .so fearful. . . and trying so hard to hide it. ..."
She'd startled herself as much as she had Margaret. She'd never been one to share griefs. Least of all, to confide in her own children . . . in a fearful fourteen-year-old girl who wanted so desperately to offer comfort and didn't know how. A measure of the scorn she'd felt for Nan Neville she now spared for herself.
"I'm tired, child. Bone-tired. You mustn't pay any mind to what I say tonight. It be very late; we'd best be up to bed."
Margaret was kneeling by the coffer-seat; she was still inclined to fling herself about with coltlike abandon, to sprawl in poses Cecily thought quite unbecoming for her age.
"Ma Mere ... is it wrong to pray to God to punish the Frenchwoman?"
Margaret was very much in earnest and Cecily even more tired than she'd realized, for she almost laughed, caught herself in time.
"Wrong, no ... presumptuous, mayhap."
"Oh, Ma Mere, I am serious!" Margaret's face had hardened, the soft mouth suddenly rigid, and in the grey eyes that now stared at Cecily, she glimpsed the woman her daughter would one day become; and then the mirror blurred, blurred in the tears that were welling in the girl's eyes, spilling down her face.
    "Ma Mere, I do hate her so much," she whispered. "When I think of Father and Edmund-"
"Don't!" Cecily said sharply. She fought a brief bitter battle for control, won, and repeated, "Don't, Meg."
In the silence that followed, there came a familiar reassuring sound. The Gabriel Bell of St Paul's was chiming its nightly salute to the Blessed Mother of God. The echoes had not yet been borne away upon the wind wet from the river when word came to them in the solar that a boat had just tied up at the dock that gave river entry to the castle. A man with an urgent message for the Duchess of York. A message from her son.
Cecily stared at the man kneeling before her. She prided herself upon her memory; nor did it fail her now.
William Hastings of Leicestershire. Eldest son of Sir Leonard Hastings, a trusted friend of her husband.
At Ludlow with them last year. Pardoned by Lancaster soon after, only to then offer his services to
Edward at Gloucester. After Sandal Castle, when the Yorkist cause could hold little allure for men of ambition. Cecily was not easily impressed, yet she found herself warming toward this man who'd been willing to stand by her son when Edward most needed such support. She was somewhat surprised, too, by his presence here. It was almost unprecedented for a man of his rank to act in the capacity of courier;
Edward's message must be urgent, indeed.
"We did hear there'd been a battle fought south of Ludlow, that my son did prevail. But no other word has reached us till now. Did the reports speak true?"
"Better than true, Madame. Your son did far more than prevail. He had an overwhelming victory." He grinned. "I can scarcely credit the fact that he's still some two months shy of his nineteenth birthday, for
I've seen no better battle commander, Madame. It may be that he has no equal on the field in all
England."
Cecily heard Margaret give a soft cry, midway between a laugh and a sob. "Tell us," she said, and they listened in rapt silence as he recounted for them the battle fought on Candlemas, February 2, at
Mortimer's Cross, four miles to the south of Wigmore, where Edward once thought to find sanctuary for his mother and little brothers.
"His intent was to march east, to join with my lord of Warwick. Word did