Richard thanked the man and dismissed him. He made a quick decision. “We camp here for the night, and move on to the border at first light,” he cried to his captains. He turned to Stanley. “You, my lord, will remain here and lay siege to the castle. Starve them out if you must, but I have no doubt it will fall if we persist. Percy and I will defeat the Scots and return to help you do it.”

Thomas Stanley bowed. Not yet entirely certain of Richard, Stanley had grudgingly agreed to accept him as his commander. But now he acknowledged that the young duke had been entrusted with the Scottish campaign not merely because he was the king’s brother but because he had a strategic military brain. Surprisingly, Richard was a leader of men, Stanley observed, despite a lack of his older brother’s stature and charisma. Stanley’s wife, the formidable Margaret Beaufort, who despised the York brothers, had warned him not to trust either of them, but he had so far not seen anything to distrust in Richard.

A scout cantered through the town streets to where Richard and his commanders were lodging for the night and gave Richard the information he needed. “The Scottish army is moving south and is at Haddington, my lord duke. If they keep moving, I warrant it is three days’ march to catch them—if the weather holds.”

The English troops were primed for action, and with relative ease, they swept through several towns and villages in southern Scotland leaving them still burning. Richard ordered the fields stripped of all their harvest, and the English army left devastation in its wake. All this was a provocation for the Scots, but Richard was puzzled when he encountered no resistance.

In the middle of the second day, a dusty horseman galloped full speed down a heather-laden hill to Richard. “I come from Lauder, my lord, a village not ten miles from here,” the man in Lovell livery said, “where I witnessed an extraordinary scene: The Scots had arrested their king and proceeded to hang his…um…his favorites from Lauder bridge right in front of him.” It was these foppish young men’s influence on infatuated James that had incensed the other nobles.

Surprise greeted this news, and Francis asked, “What did they do to James?”

“He is their prisoner and is taken to Edinburgh, and the army has turned back.”

“Now what?” Northumberland asked. “We have them on the run.”

Richard was quiet for a moment. He had hoped to engage the Scots in the lowlands; he knew the closer to Edinburgh they went, the rising topography would be a less desirable battleground.

“Let us double our efforts to reach the lily-livered rabble,” he declared. “Let us march on.”