There is a moment of perfect stillness, as they ride through the gates of York.

Then Richard raises their clasped hands, and the stillness explodes.

Anne's horse shies a little, bringing her closer to Richard, and he responds by bringing her hand to his mouth, kissing her wedding ring and each of her knuckles.

Another round of cheers echoes around them, deafening and heartening, and Anne feels loved in a way she never has outside their bedchamber - these people love Richard as their King, love her as their Queen, and there is no doubt in them.

He is the last son of York, the man who cast down the last Lancastrian pretender. How could they but love him?

There is another moment of perfect stillness as the cheers fail, prompted by Richard's fall from the saddle, slow and Lancaster red.

Anne's hand is still in his when he hits the road, and remains there even as their guards converge and try to pull her away.

Not now, she wants to scream, not like this, not after all we have come through.

When she screams, there are no words. How can there be, when Richard is blank-eyed and bloodied below on the ground?

"A musket, madam," Richard Ratcliffe says, and Anne presses her hand hard to her mouth - it is that, or begin to cry, and if she starts she will not stop. "The physicians have stopped the bleeding, but they are concerned."

"He has lost so much blood, Annie," Francis says, kneeling just to her left. "Will you come to him? He has been asking for you."

"He- he is awake?" she asks, horrified - he must be in so much pain, and to be aware of it must be terrible. "I will come. I will- I will come. Bring me to him, Francis."

They run, as best she can in her cumbersome skirts, and push through the door into Richard's bedchamber just as he howls in pain. The room reeks of blood and burning flesh, but there is no smell of rot, as there was when last Anne came to him like this.

It is the same shoulder. The left, the shoulder that bore the pain of his bent spine, that bears all their pains now. Why has God decided to sour all their joy, to steal away all their happiness? His shoulder was recovered, and so were they, but now-

"Anne," he calls, hoarse, desperate, reaching for her with his right hand even as Richard Ratcliffe and John Pole throw themselves over him again, to hold him down as his flesh sizzles once more under the cauterising irons. He screams her name, and she dives toward him, pushing John Pole's legs out of the way so she can curl up on the pillow and draw Richard's head into her lap.

He is sobbing, when the searing stops, his good arm wrapped tight around her waist and his face buried in her skirts, and she is sobbing too, to see him like this.

"You must survive this," she tells him, stroking his lovely hair and determinedly not looking at the ruin of his shoulder - oh, God be good, she can see the bone, a pale splintered mess amidst the red, red wreckage. "You must be strong, and survive this for me. You must. "

He is shivering all over now, shock turning him pale and clammy under her hands, and she cannot stand it - he is not allowed to die before her. She will not permit it.

"He will live," she says to the physicians, rubbing her hands firm over his chest, to try and quell the shivering, "or you will die."

She will hold to that promise - after all, she is nothing if not her father's daughter.

Richard wakes late in the night, so late that she can see the dawn creeping up beyond the city.

"Water," he croaks, and she helps him sip a little water, and then a little wine. "I thought I had imagined you."

"Now, or earlier?"

He shrugs his right shoulder, the left unmoving - should she worry over that? Is it better that it stays still and spares him the pain, or that it hurts him, but functions?

"Both," he says. "I don't know. I thought I would die."

"You may yet," she says, settling hip to hip, her over the blankets and him under. "I thought you were dead before you hit the ground."

He had been so pale, even for him. He is so pale now, paler than she has ever seen him save when he was brought home from Bosworth, and she is terrified.

What if he dies? He cannot be allowed to die. She could not bear it.

"Come lie with me," he says, patting the bed on his right - and of course she must, so she slips off the heavy woollen robe someone wrapped her in and climbs under the covers to curl against him. His skin is still clammy, cold and hot and damp with sweat, but his heart is steady under her hand, and his breathing strained, but even.

"Please don't leave me again," she whispers, surprised by her tears even though it seems as though they have been falling for some time. "Please, Richard, I could not bear to lose you again."

His strong right arm is weak around her shoulders, and she is so afraid.

The whole city is hunting for the would-be murderer, and Anne wishes she could help them. She wishes she was stronger, fiercer, that she could march through the city as Margaret of Anjou would have, that she could find the bastard and tear his heart out with her own hands.

Is she to lose everything dear to her? It feels as though it must be so, she thinks, as she watches Richard toss and turn in a fever - a milder one than what took him after Bosworth, but he is weaker now than he was then, frailer and weaker and delicate.

Her rosary was her father's, once, a heavy thing of black ebony beads and silver links, and she almost fears that it will break apart under the weight of her prayers.

"You cannot die," she tells him, taking his unmoving left hand and wrapping the heavy beads through his fingers. "I forbid you to die, Richard of Gloucester, do you hear me? I forbid it."

He mutters something - Edward's name, she thinks, but his brother or their son, she cannot be sure - and then turns away from her, and she weeps.

Anne holds court in his place, a rosary that was Izzie's wound tight through her fingers. It is pretty and dainty, beads of amethyst and links of gold, and she can see people looking at how it never stills in her hands.

She does not care. She is Richard's wife, and she must pray twice as hard as everyone else does for his recovery.

She is speaking with Thom Howard and Hal Percy about some dispute between the Earl of somewhere and Baron something-or-other when Francis comes in, dusty and worn and bloody-lipped, but triumphant.

"You have found him," she says, upright without any thought to stand. "I want to see him."

"He has given up the names of his conspirators without even being asked, my lady," Francis says, taking the knee before her. "He says that had you not come closer to the King, the King would be dead, madam. He seems to think that you saved his life."

Had her horse not shied at the noise - had the people not shown such love - Richard would be dead. Oh, God.

"Would you rather arrest them now, so they can all be executed together, or execute him immediately, Your Grace?"

Anne doesn't even care for the man's name, only for the names of those who paid him.

"Bring them to me," she says. "I will see them all dead."

Talbot, de Vere, Welsh names of no account - Richard pardoned them in the days following Bosworth, and they repay him with this.

Well, Anne will repay their disloyalty with blood, and attainders, and no mercy.

How dare they. How dare they!

Richard's fever breaks not an hour after Anne signs the warrants for their executions.

"You have been acting in my name, I see," he says, foggy-edged and starry-eyed. "You were not hurt?"

"No, love," Anne says, and it is laughter and a sob both. "No, only afraid."

She stays with him, leaves John Pole to witness the executions in their names, and goes out into court again that evening, to reassure their courtiers that the King is well, that he is recovering, that he is alive.

Christmas Day comes in a storm of hail and howling winds, but Anne does not mind. She wakes that morning curled against Richard's side, him snoring louder even than the gale battering the windows and his cheeks flushed for the first time in weeks.

Three weeks, he's been abed, pale as bone and stupefied on wine to cope with the pain. Anne has been working with John Pole to arrange for his continuing convalescence - court will move to York for the foreseeable future, it has been decided - and spending as much time as she can by his side.

Not enough time, apparently, if he could have managed this.

"It was Annie," he admits, and Anne wishes his sisters would go away a little. They are always present, the Duchesses of Exeter and Suffolk, and while Anne loves Annie and Bess both, she loves them best when they are far away. "I told her what I wanted, and she sought it out for me - she has taste closer to yours than Bess."

It is a necklace to match the coronet he had made for her last year, and dainty pearl earrings with lovely silver clasps. There is a ring, too, a sapphire polished smooth and round as a robin's egg, set in gold, and small enough that it does not dwarf her hand.

"My gifts seem paltry in comparison," she says, a little embarrassed. She has a clock for him, because he loves mechanical things, and shirts and new doublets, and a ring - just the one piece of jewellery, plain and simple, a gold band and a polished emerald so dark it looks almost black, made to fit his smallest finger.

She has a new nightgown, too, but that will be kept aside until he is well enough to truly appreciate such things.

"Your gifts are perfect," he tells her, and means it so much that she can see it on his face, in his lovely dark eyes. "Anne…"

She kisses him very carefully, because she is still afraid of hurting him, and is outright mortified by the sound she makes when he catches her lower lip between his teeth as she draws away.

"Later," he promises her, and she wonders if perhaps she has underestimated his recovery.

When he arrives in the throne room, supported by John Pole and wan above his new dark green doublet, she knows she has underestimated him - and when he smiles at her, shy and knowing, she knows that she will have to bring out that new nightgown to equal this gift from him to her.

"I could not allow you to hold court on Christmas Day on your own," he says, kissing her cheek as he sinks into his chair. "Let us see how honoured we are by our subjects, shall we?"

"We will stay here until Candlemas," he announces on the first day he is well enough to hold court alone, on the feast of the Epiphany. "And from here, we will travel to Cambridge."

There are murmurs at this - doubtless the city wishes to host them longer, to keep them well as repayment for hurts suffered within their walls, but Anne knows that Richard wishes only to go home, to settle into his own bed and have his own things about him.

He was always the same, when they were away from Middleham for long. Strange to think that London, despite them both thinking of it with dislike, has become home.