"Order, please!" The class settled down with murmurs and groans. The afternoon's lesson was to be history, considered, to the everlasting surprise of Miss Katherine Bliss, to be the most deadly subject to which students could be subjected. Miss Bliss herself loved history, and had always done her best to share that fascination with her students. She had declaimed Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day Exhortation to her largely uninterested audience when they had studied Henry V and the hundred years war last term, and today, as a respite from the dynastic intricacies of the Wars of the Roses, she was planning to thrill them with the harrowing story of the Princes in the Tower.
As she spun her tale, emphasizing (in what she thought was surely a touching manner) the boys' enforced separation from their mother and sisters, Miss Bliss was pleased to see that even Timothy Eccles, whose interests ran to football and nothing else, appeared to be paying attention. "Now," she continued, "not content with having wickedly imprisoned his poor nephews, King Richard on the contrary began to worry that some loyal man might yet attempt to free them and set young Edward, the rightful king, on the throne. So he sent to the Constable of the Tower, Sir Richard Brackenbury, with orders to murder them as they slept." Miss Bliss paused briefly for dramatic effect, then plunged ahead. "But that good man was horrified at such atrocity, and he refused, "though he should die therefore," as Sir Thomas More tells us. Even though he was loyal to the king, he could not countenance the slaughter of innocents. And so King Richard sent for James Tyrrel, a villainous and desperate criminal, and commanded him to do the deed, to which he agreed quite willingly. The next night, Tyrrel crept into the chamber where the two boys lay, having secured the keys under a pretext from Sir Richard Brackenbury. A shaft of moonlight from the window illuminated their angelic faces as they slept, innocent and unaware of the terrible fate their uncle planned. And Tyrrel smothered them! Just as his foul master King Richard ordered!"
Miss Bliss had only intended to pause briefly, before taking up her narrative to describe Richard's other misdeeds and eventual punishment and defeat at Bosworth, but she was interrupted suddenly.
"No he didn't," said a voice from the middle of the class. Miss Bliss glanced up. "It was all a lie spread by Henry Tudor," Luna Lovegood continued, an earnest look on her face. "Richard actually had the princes taken North, to be raised there. Henry Tudor was the one who had them murdered."
Miss Bliss had never quite known what to make of Luna Lovegood. She had a vague idea that Mr. Lovegood ran a newspaper, and that his wife had died only a few years ago. She made a great effort to be kind to Luna on that account, but she could never escape the feeling that there was something odd about the child. But Luna would be going away to a public school next year; Miss Bliss virtuously hoped that she would make the friends there that she had never made at Ottery-St-Catchpole primary.
Nevertheless, she was not a little annoyed at this contradiction to her carefully constructed tale, even if was gratifying to see that at least one of her students cared for history. "It is true that there are some people who hold that or similar opinions," she said, her tone a little sharp, "but no serious historian believes a word of it."
"That's only because Henry had all the histories distorted to make him look better," Luna said simply. "Everyone knew that Richard was the better king, you see, so he had to try to defame him. But I believe in Richard. My mother was from Yorkshire, and loyalty still binds us."
It was patently ridiculous, but Miss Bliss found that she had nothing to say. Clearly, the child knew her own mind on the matter and would not be persuaded. She wondered for the thousandth time what sort of an upbringing Luna Lovegood had at home.
loyaulte me lie