“The queen is confident,” I say. The queen is tremendously confident. November comes, and still she does not return to London, hating London and blaming the London ballad makers and chap-book sellers for her unpopularity in the kingdom. Their tales and songs describe her as a wolf, a she-wolf who commands a Fisher King—a man reduced to a shell of what he should be. The most bawdy rhymes say she cuckolded him with a bold duke and popped their bastard in the royal cradle. There is a drawing of a swan with the face of Edmund Beaufort, waddling towards the throne. There are songs and alehouse
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