Trust became a theme of that first summer at Middleham for Richard. In the castle yard, where the young students practiced hand-to-hand combat with blunted weapons, archery, and tilting, Richard learned to count on his sword, his technique, and his instincts.

“On the battlefield, you must trust all those who fight with you—be they commanders, fellow knights or common foot soldiers,” strapping and scarred John Lacey bellowed as he watched his charges thrust and parry, trip and fall down, get bruised and sometimes bloodied. “The chaplain will tell you to have faith in God, and I agree, but most of all you must have faith in yourself. If you cannot trust yourself, who will trust you?”

After a few weeks, the routine became second nature to the youths. Up with the lark, they attended mass before breaking their fast. Richard would laugh as Rob’s stomach growled all the way through the service until they could fall on their breakfast of ale, bread, meat or cheese. Next there was food for their brains as they trooped into a wide chamber in the keep for serious studies that included not only the classics, French, law and mathematics, but the rudiments of music, dance and all the elements of chivalry. Being a knight meant more than mere skill with a weapon; it meant studying the great treatises of war and its tactics, and learning to have “all courtesy in words, deeds, and degrees. In other words,” Richard groaned to Rob one day as they were struggling with the dense text of The Government of Kings and Princes, “we must be perfect.”

By midday, they fell upon the dishes prepared for dinner, which the earl and his family took with the household retainers. The wealthy earl would regularly have several oxen cooked for the company, and that was not only when he was entertaining. Known for his generosity towards the peasants, he would send out daggers, speared to the hilt with meat, to the villagers waiting hungrily outside the kitchen door.

Richard particularly looked forward to this time in the day, and not just because of the food. As Edward’s brother, he had a special place at Warwick’s table and enjoyed feeling part of a family again. He never admitted it, not even to himself, but Richard was homesick for his own family—aye, even George. The earl had been absent often that summer. As governor of the north for the king, he had joined Edward to help keep safe the Northumberland border with Scotland. To tell the truth, Richard did not mind the earl’s many absences, because he felt more comfortable with the female members of the Warwick family. Anne Beauchamp, the countess, was an unassuming woman with kind eyes, and Richard liked her. She looked to her husband in all things, unlike Richard’s indomitable mother, yet Richard had noticed their marriage displayed none of his parents’ mutual affection. That the countess reserved for her two daughters.