A year ago, after York had fled to Ireland, Wiltshire had returned from his exile in Burgundy and, like me, been made a Knight of the Garter and as I raced to rally my own men I raged inwardly that he had woefully failed to grasp the motto of that august order of chivalry; Honi soit qui mal y pense – Evil be to him who thinks it. My army assembled beside the River Lugg, I turned to find Owen as agreed on my right – and I sent up a prayer of thanks when Wiltshire and his mercenaries lined up on the left flank as arranged, so that we presented a united front to the Yorkist ranks. Everyone was on foot, cavalry was too vulnerable to artillery and arrow-fire. Some commanders chose to order the battle from horseback but I believed that gave the infantry the impression that we were not all in it together and had vetoed Wiltshire’s suggestion that we did so. It was immediately obvious that our enemy had done the same, for as we waited for the heralds’ last minute parley the two sides began to hurl a barrage of taunts and threats, promising each other death and the fires of hell in all manner of violent ways, and our men aimed most of their vitriol at the lofty youth in the van of the opposing army who was standing, hand on sword, defiant.

I had never before encountered the eighteen-year-old who now called himself Duke of York. Edward had been too young to attend court while I lived in my brother’s royal household and, at an early age, had been sent to Ludlow to get his education and training on his own rich Mortimer estates in the Welsh borderlands. Now that I was close enough to study him, gleaming in his polished armour and still helmetless before the battle began, I was surprised to see that he was not thick-set and dark-haired like the father for whose death he was seeking revenge but lean and outstandingly tall, his flaxen-hair blowing in the breeze as he stood head and shoulders above his men, like a crane among chickens. Even when a helmet covered his hair there would be no hiding this giant among his soldiers. I wondered how I would have felt at his age and in his position, leading an army into the maelstrom of all-out battle, concluding that I would have been exceedingly nervous and at the same time extremely anxious not to show it; much the same as I felt now, facing my first full battle command, just as he was.