There is a rider, on the eve of battle.
He is flying the Queen's standard, and the bottom falls out of Richard's world - she is dead, then. Anne is gone.
"Francis," he says, faintly, and Francis Lovell is at his right hand without a sound. Good, honest Francis, who has been Richard's right hand since they were boys, and Richard his. He will miss Francis. "Should I fall in battle tomorrow, my sister Elizabeth's son, John - he is to be given my rights. He is my heir. Am I understood?"
Francis will see to it - he knows John as well as Richard does, loves Elizabeth's family just as well as Richard does, for the time he spent with them.
John de la Pole is only ten years Richard's junior, a fine young man with Elizabeth's sharp nose, inherited from their father, and her bright laughter, all her own but shared with Ned. He will make a fine king, with Francis and Elizabeth at his shoulders.
Do you forgive me, Ned, Richard wonders, for showing up your lie? Do you forgive me, Ned, for depriving your children of the futures you had planned for them?
Is losing Anne a penance for not saving George, as losing Edward had been a penance for not saving Ned's boys? Richard can feel his soul creak under the weight of all the penance, and wonders if a broken soul can ever reach Paradise.
"Take the messages from London," Richard says, and turns for his tent. His shoulder is aching already, from the cold and the rain and the weight of his armour and Edward's ghost in his arms, Anne's grief in his heart, and he must rest it for the morning. "Bring anything of import to me. I will be within."
His page knows better than to speak - a sensible boy, one of Thom Howard's ever-growing brood - but his squire is his nephew, and dares to speak when words are not wanted.
Both of them Edmunds, both of them like to die before seeing manhood. Richard wonders if Edmunds are all cursed, and thinks of their Edmund, slain with their lord father on the She-Wolf's order. All for naught. All for nothing.
"You must be victorious on the morrow, uncle," Edmund de la Pole says, unbuckling Richard's pauldron, giddy as only a boy can be, before battle. "The Queen will never forgive us if we allow you to lose."
Richard knows that living without Anne's forgiveness is unbearable - in her illness, in her grief, she has been unable to see the lies for what they are - and so he does not blame the boys for worrying about such a thing. They are good boys, his Edmunds, and he half thinks to send them away so that they might return to their mothers.
He still remembers his lady mother's scream, when word reached her of his lord father and Edmund's deaths. He would not inflict that on Elizabeth, or on Lady Howard.
His tent is luxurious, as he remembers Ned's being in France, on other campaigns - he has never had the same taste for luxury as his brothers had, something he and Anne always shared, and feels out of place and out of sorts for the opulence. He says nothing, though, as Edmund de la Pole strips him of his armour and Edmund Howard puts it away, neat as a pin. It will all be over soon regardless, so what matter how fine his tent?
"Let me past, you fool!" he hears Francis shout outside. "I must speak with the King!"
"Bring Lord Lovell to me," Richard says to Edmund, one of them, either of them. Anne is dead. What does anything else matter? Ned and Edward and now Anne , how is he to fight a battle when-
"Dickon!" Francis cries, staggering past the boys with some scrap of a letter in his hand. "Dickon, you must read it!"
It has been years since Francis called him Dickon, and Richard snaps to attention at the unfamiliar address - no one has called him Dickon at all, since Ned died.
"You must read it," Francis says again, pressing the letter into Richard's hand with a wide, mad smile. "Come away, lads, let the King read his correspondence in private, come away-"
Richard hears no more, because the seal on the letter is Anne's, broken by Francis' impatient hand.
The writing on the parchment, elegant writing with more scrolls and swirls than it really needs, that is Anne's, too.
"She is alive," he gasps, and his knees hit the ground so hard he feels it in his shoulders. "Anne is- my Anne -"
Francis comes to him, later - ten minutes, an hour, Richard doesn't know, and he doesn't much care, because Anne is alive! She is alive, and it is after midnight, so God must be favouring him today! He simply must!
"I must win," he croaks, laughing and crying in Francis' arms, so jubilant that he feels victorious already. "I must win, for I will not see her again if I don't, and I must see her again, Francis, I must."
Anne had dismissed his squires and stripped him of his armour herself, the day he returned from France. She had laughed while doing it, and kissed him after every piece, every buckle and strap.
He remembers the taste of her mouth as if he last kissed her just yesterday, but it has been months, in truth. He has not kissed his wife since before their son died, and the part of him that is still cautious, that is not convinced that God will see him to victory, regrets that so much it aches.
But she is alive. She yet lives, so he can win, and he can return to London, and he can kiss her until their mouths are bruised, because she is alive.
There is a battle to be fought, first. A battle to be won. He will win, though, and he will return to Anne, and he will remind her that it was love as much as practicality that drove him to ask for her hand.
His shoulder is still paining him, under his armour, and he has no doubt that it will be worse before the day is out. When he returns to London, when he heals his marriage as he could not his son, he will ask Anne to coax out the pains with her strong, bony fingers, and then he will take her to bed.
He will do these things, because she is alive.
He does not see the Tudor boy, or his godforsaken uncle - he sees their standard, the Lancastrian arms fashioned with the Tudor, sees the red dragon, sees a man with the white rose on his breast cut down in a swathe of red that stains the whole world.
His crown is heavy on his helm, but he does not care. Let Henry fucking Tudor come to him now, and see who will stand the victor. Tudor fights for a crown, for a throne, but Richard fights for Anne , and there is no greater prize.
Francis told him that he had taken leave of his wits, this morning, when he had made it clear that he was more looking forward to seeing Anne than to a triumphant homecoming. Richard does not care. Everything seems perfectly clear now. He must win, and set England to right, and only then will God allow him to set his marriage to rights.
His sword catches in a hinged elbow for a moment, and Francis throws himself shield-first at a would be assailant - and there, Hal Percy, and here, John de la Pole, his own bloody heir, all riding to his rescue.
His shoulder is so tired. His heart is so tired. Edward will never learn to swing a sword as John does, to ride a tilt as Francis does, to loose an arrow as Hal does.
He will never grow to love a wife, as Richard does.
"I am coming home, Anne," he says, uncaring if the others hear him and think him mad. "I am coming, sweetheart."
He frees his sword, and once loose it is loosed, and all the world seems red, save the white roses his companions wear.
The pain, when it comes, is whiter than any rose, and he vomits from it.
Undignified, perhaps, but better than dying.