An anguished cry from the city gate halted the escort’s progress over the Teme to the royal pavilion. Recognizing the voice, Dickon swiveled around from his seat in front of a knight and watched in horror as Piers Taggett, his friend and champion, staggered down the hill to reach them, a crimson river streaming from a bloodied stump where his arm should have been. Dickon had stared for a second, gruesomely fascinated, but then without warning had leaned over the knight’s leg and vomited onto the bridge. Ashamed, he lifted his face again only to see his mother catch the faithful falconer before he fell, his back shot full of arrows and giving him the grotesque appearance of a human hedgehog. Cecily had cradled Piers in her arms, tears running unchecked down her cheeks and onto his dear, now-ashen face, while Dickon’s escort urged on his horse to spare the boy more misery.

Even though there had been no battle in the full sense of the word, it had been Dickon’s first taste of war, and he would never forget what he experienced at Ludlow. Apart from the horrors perpetrated by the unruly royal troops, Piers and Constance had been taken from him in the space of an hour; he had not known when he would see his father and brothers again; and, looming in the frightened mind of a young boy was the question: where would he be on the morrow? He would forget the small details, like how he had asked the hardened soldier holding him, “May we go home to Fotheringhay now?” and the knight’s response of, “You’ll go somewhere, young ’un, but His Grace the King will decide where,” or that he had wet the bed that night.

King Henry had decided that Dickon’s Aunt Anne of Buckingham’s residence of Maxstoke would be the place where the attainted duke of York’s family should reside. It would be a long time before Dickon saw Fotheringhay or knew peace again.