Suddenly the bailey was filled with cheering yeomen—guards, armorers, blacksmiths, farriers, potters, fletchers, cooks, almoners, pantlers, and others who support the daily living of a massive castle like Middleham. Two strapping young men ran forward and touched their forelocks. “We be glad to see you, my lord,” one said to Richard, “do ye know us?”

Richard recognized the grooms immediately. “Tom! Jake! I am right glad to see you,” he cried, expecting one of them to take his reins. Instead, coming to help him dismount was old Blackbeard himself, the master of henchmen, his lopsided grin revealing empty spaces in his gums.

“My lord of Gloucester, welcome!” Master Lacey cried, taking the reins. Then, surprised at seeing Rob and Francis close behind, he could not help but laugh. “My three worsest students,” he teased them all. “Have ye come back for more training? By all the saints, I done my bestest.”

The trio joined him in merry laughter, and Richard knew his worries had been for naught. “You were right, Anne,” he murmured, seeing her eyes brimming. “This is where we belong and where we shall, God willing, stay.”

“Aye, Richard.” She stood on tiptoe and whispered, “And have our first child.”

Richard turned his happy shout of “God be praised” into “God bless you all,” as he lifted Anne’s hand to the sky.

Nothing could console Anne when, three months into her pregnancy, she lost the child. There seemed no reason for the loss except that perhaps her despondency during the past two desperate years had led her to become malnourished.

“Some bracing Yorkshire air, nourishing Wensleydale cheese, and plentiful game will soon put flesh on those bones,” the physician told her after an examination. “There is no reason you will not be with child again soon, your grace.” His prediction, however, was stalled until the following March, when a wicked north wind forced even stoic Yorkshiremen and women to spend more time than usual huddled beneath blankets. Thus Richard and Anne’s little son was not the only babe to come into the world at yuletide that year.

All through the summer months, Richard went back and forth to Nottingham, where Edward was holding court and where Richard and George still disputed their respective claims. George was angry when Edward decided to restore the coveted Beauchamp inheritance to the duchess of Warwick, depriving Isabel and Anne of it for as long as their mother lived. Imagine if you will, George’s fury when Richard, in decisive preemption, sent his retainer James Tyrell to Beaulieu Abbey to take Countess Anne from sanctuary and convey her to Middleham. Mother and daughter were happily reunited, and grateful for his protection and for installing her at her favorite residence, Anne Beauchamp chose to turn over her entire inheritance to Richard and Anne—with Edward’s blessing.