“Gloucester, you will command the van,” Edward told his brother, as they studied his battle strategy. He once again excluded George, who pretended nonchalance. “George you will ride with my center, and Lord Hastings has the right flank. Aye, we are tired, but the enemy is more so—my spies tell me they have marched relentlessly for a full day and a night. And thanks to my commanding the constable of Gloucester to refuse them entry, they have had no supplies since Bristol. We shall have the edge.” He drummed his fingers on the table, making the small pieces of wood representing his divisions jump up and down. “You know our aim: we must remove the threat to the crown permanently. We must kill or take Edouard of Lancaster or there will never be peace.” He leveled his gaze at each of them in turn until they nodded. “Now get some sleep,” he ordered.

Richard and George left the tent together. “You know I could command as well as you, don’t you?” George said.

Arrogant prick, Richard thought. “Aye, I do not doubt you think that, George, but you have no one to blame but yourself, and I cannot pity you. Do you blame Edward for wanting to keep you close? To me you are no less a traitor than Warwick.” He strode off to his own tent.

George glared after his younger brother. “Runt,” he muttered, “and a deformed runt at that.”

The battle of Tewkesbury, with the magnificent abbey standing sentinel a half mile away, was a decisive but bloody climax to the quarrel between cousins. Edward’s four thousand Yorkist soldiers crushed Lancastrian Henry’s five thousand commanded by the duke of Somerset.

Once again, Edward owed much of the triumph to his youngest brother, Richard, whose force at first was taken by surprise by Somerset. But Richard held on valiantly, thanks to some two hundred spearmen concealed in a copse to his left, who at his command suddenly emerged from cover and scattered Somerset’s right flank. As the fleeing Lancastrians raced for sanctuary in the abbey, George and some of his men caught and killed young Edouard, giving George something to crow about and earning Edward’s gratitude.

“He whimpered like a pup,” George told the group gathered around Edward when the fighting was over. “He cried for his mother, poor baby. I killed him in revenge for Edmund.”

“Good for you, George,” Edward said. “But now, we must find Somerset.”