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

morbid horrors that can inhabit the mind of a child, knew Richard had always been a child with an uncommonly rich imagination. She bitterly regretted that she had not spent more time with her youngest son when he was still young enough for her to have won his confidence, bitterly regretted that he did not seem able to share his grief with her.
If only he were as easy to reach as George! George had always come to her, always ready to confide, to carry tales, and infrequently, to confess. Strange, how very different her sons were in that respect.
Richard
    suffered in silence, Edward didn't appear to suffer at all, George shared more than she truly cared to know, and Edmund . . .
At that, she stumbled to her feet, fled to the prie-dieu in her bedchamber, to drop down on her knees and try to seek respite from pain in prayer. She spent hours praying for her husband and son in those numbing January days. It was all she knew to do. But for the first time in her life, prayer availed her little.
It was not as if she were unfamiliar with death. She'd borne twelve children, seen five die swaddled in baby linens, stood dry-eyed and grieving as the tiny coffins were lowered into the ground under pitifully sparse tombstones that gave only the dates of their meager lifespans and the names, the names she repeated each day as she repeated her rosary: Henry, William, John, Thomas, Ursula.
No past grief, however, had prepared her for the loss she'd suffered at Sandal Castle. Nothing would ever be the same for her again, not from the moment she stood on the stairway at Baynard's Castle, staring down at her nephew and knowing, even before he spoke, that he brought death into her household. She sought refuge in hate and then in prayer, and at last, recognized that her grief was not going to heal, that it would be an open, gaping wound she'd take to her grave. Once she came to terms with that, she found she could once more take up the burdens of daily living, the numbing duties of motherhood. But she'd lost forever the ability to sympathize with the weaknesses of others, would never again find patience for those who broke under pressure.
If at night she allowed herself those bitter hours till dawn to grieve for her husband, her murdered son, her days now were given over to the living, to the children whose need must come first. With the arrival of her eldest son's letter, she felt the first flicker of hope. Edward was, for the moment, beyond the reach of
Lancaster. He was young, so very young. But unlike her husband, Cecily had never been deceived by
Edward's wildness into underestimating his ability; she knew he had a shrewd, discerning mind, a will of granite and a jaunty confidence in his own destiny that she never completely appreciated but recognized as the strength it was. And his conduct since Sandal Castle had given her only pride, fierce and intense and maternal.
He'd continued to gather troops to his banner, with a coolness that the most experienced battle commander might have envied, and rumor had it that he'd already claimed his first victory. Most heartening of all for Cecily, he had somehow raised the money to ransom Rob Apsall, the young knight who'd been with Edmund on Wakefield Bridge. She could not stifle her dismay that she'd not thought to do this herself; she saw her failure as an inexcusable dereliction of duty, a lapse not much mitigated in her own mind by the magnitude of her loss. But Edward hadn't been as
    remiss as she; he'd recognized their obligation to one who'd loyally served the House of York, served
Edmund. Cecily saw more than generosity in her son's action, saw it as the responsible and honorable gesture of a man grown, for she so desperately needed for him to evidence that now.
But for her, the most meaningful action he took in the wake of the slaughter at Sandal Castle was to write to his little brothers and younger sister. To Cecily, the letters came as a godsend, a lifeline thrown to her troubled children at a