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

that developed, heard a sharp command given to clear the bridge, the sullen response of the soldiers. Men were grudgingly giving way to let these new arrivals pass. They rode across the bridge in a spray of snow to the muttered curses of the men they'd splashed. Edmund was attempting awkwardly to bring his bound hands up to wipe snow from his eyes when a stallion was reined in directly before him.
From a great distance, he heard a voice echoing, "That boy there! Let me see him!"
Edmund raised his head. The face within the visor was swarthy, almost familiar, but recognition eluded him.
"I thought so ... Rutland!"
At sound of his own name, Edmund suddenly knew the speaker. Andrew Trollope, York's onetime ally, the man who'd betrayed them at Ludlow. Trollope's treachery had been a bitter initiation into adulthood for Edmund; he'd rather liked Trollope. Now, however, he found himself strangely bereft of rage, even of resentment. He felt nothing, nothing at all.
Pandemonium reigned briefly on the bridge; Edmund's captors could scarcely credit their good luck. The
Earl of Rutland! A Prince of the blood! No ransom would be too high for such a prize; they suddenly saw themselves to be made men.
"Somerset will want to know of this," one of Trollope's companions was saying, and the voice triggered a buried memory in Edmund's numbed brain: the man was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. These men were his father's avowed enemies. What, then, was he doing here in their midst, bound and cold and sick and totally at their mercy? And then he heard Northumberland say, "That leaves only Salisbury unaccounted for."
Edmund tried to rise, found his knee no longer took commands from
    his brain. The words were out of his mouth before he even realized he meant to speak.
"Trollope! What of my father?"
Both men had turned in the saddle. "Dead," Trollope answered.
They rode on, Northumberland's voice drifting back across the bridge as he regaled his companions with details of their enemy's death.
"... under those three willow trees east of the castle. Yes, that be the place . . . body stripped of armor . .
. hailed as 'King without a kingdom'! Or a head, if Clifford does have his way! Of course it's not common to behead the dead after battle, but tell that to Clifford!"
The voices faded from earshot. On the other side of the bridge, Rob Apsall tried to cross to Edmund, was roughly shoved back.
"Edmund . . . Edmund, I'm sorry."
Edmund said nothing. He'd turned his head away, toward the expanse of water beyond the bridge; Rob could see only a tangle of dark brown hair.
Other riders were now coming from the direction of the battlefield. Looting of the bodies had begun.
There was a commotion at the end of the bridge. A soldier hadn't moved aside with enough alacrity to suit one of the horsemen, and he'd turned his stallion into the offending soldier; muscled against the bridge railing, the man yelled in fear and strained futilely against the animal's heaving flanks.
Rob's captors hastily cleared a path, lined up along the railing. Rob did likewise. He was suddenly rigid, felt as if the air had been forcibly squeezed from his lungs. With foreboding, he watched the horseman riding across the bridge toward them. Lord Clifford of Skipton-Craven. Clifford, one of the guiding hands behind the ambush on Wakefield Green. Clifford whose savage temper had long been a byword, even among his own men; who was known to harbor a remorseless hatred for the Duke of York.
Edmund gradually became conscious of the sudden silence. Turning his head, he saw a mounted knight staring down at him, staring with an unblinking intensity that reminded Edmund, inexplicably, of the eyes of his favorite falcon as it first sighted prey. He returned the stare, swallowed with difficulty; it was queer, but his tongue no longer felt as if it belonged in his mouth. Why he should so suddenly feel such purely physical fear, he didn't know; it was as if his body were reacting to an awareness that