It did not help when, after a year of obscurity for the three siblings, George was called to Westminster to set up his own household at the king’s side as befitted the heir to the throne. However, it was a relief not to have the daily reminder of “you forget I’m next in line, Richard,” thrown in one’s face.

George’s arrogance aside, the thought that he was forgotten again irked Richard more as he chose to climb the hill to the ruined tower, once the pride of a previous duke of Gloucester, to watch George being conveyed up the Thames in the king’s barge. He sat with his arm around Traveller’s neck at the foot of it and gazed with longing at the far away spires of London. “I’ll be stuck here forever,” he told his faithful friend.

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Spring – Summer 1464

Richard had never been happier.

Many would have guessed it was because of the beauty of the wild Yorkshire landscape, the excitement of mastering a shortsword or dagger, the unaccustomed camaraderie of a dormitory filled with eager youths his age, or the bracing, clean air that filled his lungs and made him feel alive. Those were factors, it is true, but it was more personal than that: he was no longer compared with and tormented by George. No one here knew George, and he had, for the first time, known a freedom from family friction. Here at Middleham he could form his own opinions and become his own man. The thought had struck him one bright July morning as he rode out of the castle yard through the squared gatehouse with his friend Robert Percy of Scotton. He suddenly gave a gleeful whoop and kicked his mare’s flanks into a canter.

The two youths had taken to sneaking in a daily early-morning gallop across the meadows behind the hulking gray castle, which dominated windswept Wensleydale for miles around. Emerald green fields dotted with sheep rolled over the hills to the bleaker moors beyond, meeting the unending sky in the middle distance, a landscape so empty of habitation its vastness reduced Richard and his horse to naught but specks.