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Time Travels with Truffle: Dateline August 22nd, 1485 – Bosworth Field -
England
The battlefield of Bosworth Field, August 22, 1485, lay silent at last. The banners of the House
of York hung torn and muddied, their lions dim beneath the smoke of cannon and
the cries that had faded into wind. Amid the wreckage, a small reddish‑orange
Pomeranian named Truffle pressed herself against the cold earth beside a fallen
crown. Her fur was matted with dust, her ears drooped, and her bright eyes
reflected the dying light of England’s last Plantagenet king.
Richard III
had fought with desperate valor. His charge through the Tudor ranks was
legendary — a king who led from the front, not from
behind walls. He struck down Sir William Brandon, Henry Tudor’s standard‑bearer,
and nearly reached his rival before being surrounded. Chroniclers would later
write of betrayal, of Lord Stanley’s sudden turn, of the chaos that swallowed
the rightful monarch. When Richard fell, the crown rolled from his head into
the mud — and Truffle, who had followed him faithfully from York to Leicester,
found it there.
Truffle had been Richard’s constant companion, a gift from
his wife Anne Neville. She had sat beside him during councils, curled at his
feet while he read dispatches, and barked at courtiers who dared speak ill of
her master. To her, Richard was not the schemer of Tudor legend, but a man
burdened by duty — a reformer who sought justice in law, who punished
corruption, who loved his people fiercely. She did not know of propaganda or
politics; she only knew that the man who had carried her through the storm was
gone.
History would not be kind to Richard. The Tudors, eager to
legitimize their fragile claim, commissioned chroniclers and playwrights to
paint him as a monster — a hunchbacked usurper who murdered his nephews and
poisoned his queen. Thomas More
and later Shakespeare would immortalize that image, turning tragedy into
caricature. Yet the records of his reign tell another story: a king who
established the Court of Requests to aid the poor, who reformed land laws, and
who sought fairness in governance. His enemies won the throne, but they also
won the narrative.
As dawn broke over Bosworth, Truffle remained beside the
crown. Soldiers passed her by, some whispering that even the king’s dog refused
to leave him. She did not understand that the world had changed — that the
Plantagenet line had ended, and the Tudor age had begun. To her, loyalty was
eternal. The crown was not a symbol of power but of love, and she guarded it
until the field was cleared and silence reclaimed the land.
Centuries later, historians would sift through the bones at
Leicester, uncovering the truth of Richard’s wounds and the dignity of his
burial. Beside his bones beneath that parking lot in suburban England were two small
pawprints pressed into the soil beside him. Those belonged to Truffle — the
last subject to mourn England’s rightful king.
And once again, History is gently guided by a tiny
paw.
