Authors: Sandra Worth
B008257PJY EBOK
The Rose of York
FALL
from
GRACE
SANDRA WORTH
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Copyright © 2008 by Sandra Worth
This ebook edition © 2012 by Sandra Worth
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental..
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Table of Contents
1
“God bless the King, and all his fellowship!”
2
“In the dead night, grim faces came and went.”
3
“To ride abroad redressing human wrongs.”
4
“For were I dead who is it would weep for me?”
5
“A star in heaven, a star...”
6
“Then a long silence came upon the hall...”
7
“I shudder, someone steps across my grave.”
8
“A moral child without the craft to rule.”
9
“And still she looked, and still the terror grew...”
11
“He rooted out the slothful officer...”
12
“No light! so late! and dark and chill the night!”
13
“Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.”
14
“Who is he that he should rule us?”
15
“The good Queen… saddening in her childless castle.”
17
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
18
“And I, the last, go forth companionless...”
19
“Sir Mordred; he that like a subtle beast...”
21
“But hither I shall never come again...”
22
“But how to take last leave of all I loved?”
23
“Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen!”
24
“Sir, there be many rumours on this head...”
25
“There will I hide thee ’till my life shall end...”
27
“For I, being simple, thought to work His will.”
28
“I hear the steps of Mordred in the west...”
29
“Ill doom is mine to war against my people...”
31
“Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies...”
32
“Now must I hence. Thro’ the thick night...”
34
“And one last act of kinghood...”
Epilogue:
“Thy shadow still would glide from room to room.”
~ * ~
Reviews and Awards
Standing alone, won the FIRST PLACE AWARD and cash prize in the 2003 Francis Ford Coppola-supported NEW CENTURY WRITERS AWARDS for best unpublished and emerging writers. The final judges of the contest included top industry producers, directors, film marketing professionals, fiction writers, playwrights, fiction editors, screenwriters, executive producers, and literary agents.
Standing alone, T
he Rose of York: Fall from Grace
captured the FIRST PLACE PRIZE in the 2003 BAY AREA WRITERS LEAGUE OPEN MANUSCRIPT COMPETITION open to both published and unpublished writers, judged by a panel of professors from the University of Houston. Comment from the judges: “This is one fine masterful work, the true quill.”
As part of
The Rose of York
series,
Fall from Grace
swept all nine categories of the 2000 Authorlink Competition judged by a top New York editor to win the GRAND PRIZE in the AUTHORLINK NEW AUTHOR AWARDS COMPETITION given to only one First Place Winner. Sandra was flown to the University of Georgia by Authorlink to receive her certificate and cash prize.
As part of
The Rose of York
series,
Fall From Grace
won the FIRST PLACE PRIZE in the Historical/Western category of the 2000 AUTHORLINK NEW AUTHOR AWARDS COMPETITION judged by top New York editors and agents.
~ * ~
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my editor and publisher, Kurt Florman of End Table Books, for his excellent work on this manuscript and David Major, partner and art director of End Table Books, for the stunning art work he has produced on all three books in
The Rose of York
series. My thanks go to fellow End Table Books author Wendy Dunn and my family for their support and encouragement.
~ * ~
For my daughter, Erica
- - -
“Though truth for a time rest and be put to silence,
yet it rotteth not, nor shall it perish.”
—
Richard, Duke of York, father of King Richard III, circa 1455
“It is by suffering that God has most nearly approached to man.
It is by suffering that man draws most near to God.”
—
Inscription at Stanford University Memorial Church
~ * ~
Background
In 1399, the childless King Richard II was deposed and murdered by Henry of Bolingbroke who became Henry IV and gave birth to the Lancastrian dynasty. For three generations the House of Lancaster ruled England: Henry IV, efficiently; Henry V, gloriously; and Henry VI, disastrously. Weary of injustice, men turned for relief to the blood heir of Richard II: Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. Thus began the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic conflict between the Houses of York and Lancaster for the Crown of England, which brought to the throne the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III.
~ * ~
Principal Characters
In a tumultuous era marked by peril and intrigue, reversals of fortune and violent death, the passions of a few rule the destiny of England and change the course of history…
Richard
: Distinguished by loyalty to his brother the King, and a tender love for his childhood sweetheart, Anne, he has known exile, loss, tragedy and betrayal. But his loyalty is first challenged by war, then by the ambitions of a scheming queen. Time and again he must choose between those he loves, until Destiny makes the final decision for him.
Edward
: A golden warrior-king, reckless, wanton, he can have any woman he wants, but he wants the only one he can’t have. When he marries her secretly and makes her his queen, he dooms himself and all whom he loves. (Deceased as story opens.)
Bess
: Edward’s detested and ambitious queen. Gilt-haired, cunning and vindictive, she has a heart as dark as her face is fair.
George
: Richard’s brother. Handsome, charming and consumed with hatred and greed, he will do anything it takes to get everything he wants. (Deceased as story opens.)
Warwick
the Kingmaker: Richard’s famed cousin, maker and destroyer of kings. More powerful and richer than King Edward himself, he attracts the jealousy of the queen and seals his fate. (Deceased as story opens.)
John
: The Kingmaker’s brother. Valiant and honourable, he is Richard’s beloved kinsman and Edward’s truest subject, but when the queen whispers in the king’s ear, he is forced to confront what no man should have to face… (Deceased as story opens.)
Anne
: The Kingmaker’s beautiful daughter. She is Richard’s only love, his light, his life…
~ * ~
Historical Characters
HOUSE OF YORK
Richard Plantagenet
, Duke of York (Deceased as story opens)
Cicely Neville
, Duchess of York, his wife
King Edward IV
, their eldest son (Deceased as story opens)
Elizabeth Woodville
(Bess), Edward’s queen
Elizabeth
, eldest daughter of King Edward and Bess Woodville
Edward
, elder son of King Edward and Bess Woodville
Richard
, their younger son
Thomas Grey
, Marquess of Dorset, Bess’s elder son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey
Richard Grey
, Bess’s younger son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey
King Richard III
, formerly Duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Richard, Duke of York
George
, Duke of Clarence, Richard’s older brother (Deceased as story opens)
Margaret
, Duchess of Burgundy, Richard’s youngest sister
Ann
, (Nan), Richard’s eldest sister, married to Sir Thomas St. Leger
Elizabeth
, Duchess of Suffolk, Richard’s elder sister
John de la Pole
, (Jack), Earl of Lincoln, her eldest son, Richard’s nephew, later his heir to the throne
Richard Neville
, Earl of Warwick nicknamed “Kingmaker”, Richard’s father-in-law. (Deceased as story opens)
Anne Beauchamp
, Countess of Warwick, his wife and Richard’s mother-in-law.
Anne Nevill
e, Warwick’s daughter and Richard’s queen
Edward
(Ned), Anne and Richard’s only child
Isabelle Neville
(Bella), Anne’s older sister and wife to Richard’s brother George (deceased)
Edward
, Earl of Warwick, Bella and George’s son
Margaret
(Maggie), Bella and George’s daughter
Katherine
, Richard’s illegitimate daughter
John of Gloucester
(Johnnie), Richard’s illegitimate son.
HOUSE OF LANCASTER
Henry Stafford
, Duke of Buckingham
Henry Tudor
, Earl of Richmond, later Henry VII
Lady Margaret Beaufort
, mother of Henry Tudor and wife of Lord Thomas Stanley
~ * ~
Introduction
Much has been written about Richard III, and many readers are familiar with Shakespeare’s portrayal of him as England’s most reviled and villainous monarch. What is not as widely known is that Richard III gave us a body of laws that forms the foundation of modern Western society. His legacy includes bail, the presumption of innocence, the protections in the jury system against bribery and tainted verdicts, and “Blind Justice”—the concept that all men should be seen as equal in the eyes of the law. He was the first king to proclaim his laws in English, so the poor could know their rights, and the first to raise a Jew to England’s knighthood.
Such ideas were revolutionary in the fifteenth century. They alienated many in the nobility and the Church and played no small part in Richard’s ultimate fate. Two hundred years later, when it was safe to do so, men questioned the traditional view of Richard bequeathed to them by the Tudors and found themselves unable to reconcile the justician with the villain, the man with the myth. In the early twentieth century, such men came together to form the Richard III Society.
Two of Richard’s most well known contemporary critics, Alison Weir and Desmond Seward, subscribe to Shakespeare’s depiction of him as a hunchbacked serial killer. In his book
Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes
, Bertram Fields, a prominent U.S. attorney and author, examines the school of thought represented by Weir and exposes the inconsistencies and deficiencies of the traditional view.
Richard III caught my imagination when I first saw his portrait in the National Gallery in London. Then I read Josephine Tey’s
The Daughter of Time
. This compelling mystery inspired me to consume whatever I could find on Richard and to make several research trips to England in search of the true Richard. It was in Paul Murray Kendall’s
Richard The Third
that I finally found him. Kendall, a Shakespearean scholar and professor of English Literature, provides a most convincing and illuminating portrayal of Richard and his times, and it is his interpretation of events that is reflected in this book.
While Shakespeare was a great dramatist, he never claimed to be a historian. In an age of torture and beheadings, he wrote to please the Tudors. The authority Shakespeare drew on was Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III, a derisive account of the last Plantagenet king, which More never finished. One of history’s enduring mysteries is why More broke off in mid-sentence and mid-dialogue to hide his manuscript. Fifteen years after his death, it was found by his nephew, translated from the Latin, and published. Had Sir Thomas More discovered the dangerous truth that the true villain was not Richard III, but the first of the Tudors, Henry VII?