The more Dickon heard the story, the more he thought about it, contemplating the criminal act of the man who seemed the most trustworthy of all their servants. “And you would have hanged had it not been for my Mother, you say. How clever she is! She understood that you were only trying to stop your family from starving, in truth. But why did you not go to your lord, my uncle Salisbury, and ask for food?”

Piers had laughed. “A peasant does not have the right, young master.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that you should be punished for something that was not your fault.”

This statement astonished the falconer. The boy had grasped the heart of the matter, but the conversation had made Piers uneasy.

“I would do anything for her grace, your mother,” he assured the young lord, hoping the boy would not relay the dangerous conversation to anyone else. “She took a chance on a poor country boy. In truth, I should not be talking to you like this—you a duke’s son. We all have our place.”

“Place?”

“I am a servant, young master. Some would call me a peasant. You are a lord, and you make the rules—the laws.”

Dickon was learning his own place, although he had not felt different playing with the boys at Fotheringhay. What made one boy noble and another a peasant? It was not a philosophical question a boy of seven might usually pose, but Dickon was unusual. His lack of physical prowess had made him rely on his mind, which was expanding daily.

“Then perhaps the laws should be changed,” Dickon said almost to himself.

Piers winked at him. “Only the king can change the laws, Dickon. Are you going to be king?”

Dickon grinned then, his pensive mood relieved by Piers’s good-natured jesting. “Nay, Master Falconer, I have no wish to be a king. Besides, King Henry has a son who will be king after him, Mother says. That is the way of the world,” he said, borrowing Margaret’s grown-up phrase and making Piers chuckle. “I shall never be king.”

Still unaccustomed to his surroundings and never tiring of exploring the castle ramparts so high on Ludlow’s strategic hill, Dickon turned and ran along the wall walk to the Northwest Tower looking towards the darkly wooded Welsh hills. A glint of metal in the distance caught his eye—lots of metal, he saw now. Then he was aware of a peculiar thrumming. Unused to hearing the sound of men on the march, he tried to imagine what it might be. As the noise grew louder, and he could now see the snake of men, he knew. “It must be the king,” he gulped and raced along the precarious walkway to the closest watchman, who called: “I see ’em, young lord.”

Grabbing his shawm, the sentry puffed out his cheeks and pushed his breath through the long, wooden instrument, deafening Dickon with its sharp wail of alarm.