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agreed the Abbot, with a twinkling smile for the boy who had always been his favourite. “But his uncle had a thought for that and bade old Bundy arrange it so that most of the weight fell upon the flanks of his Grace's little white horse. Gloucester rode bare-headed beside him, Madam,” he went on, “and the Lord Mayor tells me that every now and then, wherever the crowds were thickest, he would make a motion towards the lad with his cap as if to say 'Here is your King,' and then reined back his great charger a little so that the cheers seemed only for his nephew, and not at all for his own victorious campaign in Scotland.”

    “That was well done,” conceded the Queen. “And how did Edward bear himself?”

    “As became your husband's son, save that he looked grievously tired. The children threw white roses in his path and many of the women wept.”

    “Wept?”

    “Because he was so young, I suppose.”

    “I would we could see him!” sighed the Queen, thereby giving her host the opening for which he had been waiting.

    “If you wish it, there is nothing easier, Madam,” he assured her. “Milord Duke sent to me the moment he arrived. He entreats your Grace to return to the Palace and to bring the children with you so that you may all be reunited.”

    “Oh, Madam, and it please you, may we not go?” begged Cicely, putting a coaxing arm about her.

    “No,” said the Queen, her thin clever mouth set straightly and her gaze on Richard as he tried, laughing, to teach his new wolfhound pup to beg for scraps.

    The learned Abbot glanced round his cluttered room and lowered his voice persuasively. “I have also had word with Lord Hastings, and he thinks that perhaps your Grace's coming here was ill-advised,” he ventured. “He feels that the late King's brother is the man of the moment and that you insult him unnecessarily by so much display of distrust.”

    The Queen was clearly tempted. She enjoyed the exalted surroundings that were due to her, all the more so because she had not been born to them. “You mean the spiritual lords who have been so loyal to us feel it would be wise for me to return?”

    “They think it would be more politic both for your Grace's sake and for their own,” said the Abbot. “For you must know how hard their lordships are having to fight of late to retain sanctuary rights at all.”

    The Queen rinsed her ringed fingers in the bowl a young monk had the honour to hold for her. “Then let Gloucester free my brother first,” was her ultimatum.

    And so the days passed and the children became cramped and irritable. They missed their rides in the royal parklands and their pleasant springtime expeditions by barge. Even Richard's gay temper began to be affected by the mother's anxiety on his behalf. News filtered in that Edward had been taken from Ely Place to the royal apartments in the Tower, and Gloucester, instead of asserting himself by staying in either palace, was lodged at Baynard's Castle, the home of his dictatorial old mother.

    They were days of anxiety and uncertainty which played havoc with everyone's temper; and they were not lightened for the Queen when the Archbishop of York came imploring her to return to him the Great Seal. The Protector had need of it so that the young King could issue sundry documents, he said, and it was as much as his own life was worth not to be able to produce it.

    “The first document he will persuade that poor innocent child to sign will be a royal recognition of his protectorship!” prophesied the Queen bitterly.

    “There are so many orders to be signed,” the Archbishop excused himself evasively, “now that the Duke has fixed July the fifth for the coronation.”

    That preparations were going on on a lavish scale no one could doubt. The hammering of carpenters erecting stands for spectators echoed around Palace and Abbey from morning till night, and carts rumbled in from the country laden with all manner of food. The tailor