“Have I not told you a thousand times nay, I do not desire to wear the crown. Now, enough of your questions, my lad. Say your prayers and go to sleep. The men are waiting.”

He kissed both boys and left the room to return to the great hall. He had sent many of the troops to camp at the foot of the hill across the river from the king’s huge force. He had also ordered several volleys from cannons on the walls to be fired during the day to warn the royal army to come no closer. Now as twilight closed out the day, it was time to prepare for battle.

Dickon dutifully said his prayers and climbed into the soft tester bed. His father may have answered his questions of kingship, but there had been another hanging on the boy’s lips that he had not dared voice: “What happens if you die, Father?”

How could he sleep, worried so about such a calamity?

No one noticed the small, pale face peering down at the departing knights from the minstrels’ gallery. As soon as the tapers had been extinguished but for one night light, Dickon had slipped out of bed and run along the passageway to the gallery above the great hall. He had arrived in time to see his parents’ loving farewell directly below him, shielded from the others by the massive aumbry. It was not the first time he had witnessed his parents’ affection for each other, but he was troubled by his mother’s tears. Was she afraid after all? He had never seen her cry before, and he curled up against the balustrade wondering: Would his father die? Would Ned and Edmund? And he began imagining them lying on the bloodied ground with half their faces ripped away, and he could not stop trembling.

Servants quietly extinguished the torches in the hall below, leaving only the flickering firelight to cast eerie shapes upon the walls. Dickon, in his fear, fancied he saw his father’s and brothers’ shadows walking there and hurriedly crossed himself in his dark hiding place, wishing he were back in bed. There was now no ambient light from the hall in the passageway, where grotesques or ghosts might be lurking that were far more real to the boy than the king and his army menacing the town across the Teme. He begged his favorite St. Anthony to protect him.

No help came for the devout little boy huddled half asleep and cold in the little minstrel gallery as an hour dragged by. Then suddenly Dickon was jolted awake by the flinging open of the massive door to the hall, and the boy heard his father’s urgent, angry voice. “Light! Give us light, I say!” Sleepy servants jumped up from their makeshift beds by the fire to obey the duke. The other lords, now fully harnessed, clanked in behind him. By now Dickon was wide awake. Had there been a battle and had he slept through it? But nay, none of the men looked bloody or even dirty.