Most readers meet Richard Neville at the end. The Kingmaker's Spy meets him at the beginning, and introduces the woman who was already there.

I recently heard someone describe Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, as "just a schemer." Nothing else. Just a schemer. He would turn in his grave if he still had one. Henry VIII destroyed that too. Contemporary sources tell a different story. Jean de Wavrin, who actually lived in the same period, wrote of a man who was generous, who was loved by the common people, whose household hospitality was legendary. The chroniclers record that "the Earl of Warwick was very generous to

The drumbeats marked his final steps, each hollow thud echoing across the square like the heartbeat of some dying beast. I stood motionless among the crowd, my face concealed beneath the deep shadow of my hood, as Lord Edmund Aubrey walked toward his death. A death I had orchestrated with careful precision. "Traitor," someone whispered nearby, the word carried on the chill February wind. "They say he plotted against the king himself."