“Nicely said, George.” Cecily nodded her approval; she could always count on George to be tractable. His benevolent parent somehow never saw the darker side of his nature, or how his smile would turn into a sulk as soon as his mother’s attention wavered from him, which it did now as she turned to Dickon. “Run and find Nurse Anne and have her ready your belongings. And use your kerchief not your sleeve to wipe your nose, Dickon. His Grace the Archbishop will think you have been brought up in the gutter.”

Archbishop? Were they to be shut up with monks? His youthful imagination conjured a damp abbey or monastery, where the archbishop would surely keep them in cheerless cells, make them wear hair shirts and only let them out to pray and learn their lessons. Dickon had seen the meagre quarters of the Yorks’ chaplain and had spent nights staying in abbeys along the road to Ludlow. He knew how clerics lived, and he was determined to resist Ned’s edict one way or another.

“How could Ned do this to us?” Dickon was incredulous as he and George made their way to their chamber. “I like it here. We have a tutor; we are doing our lessons. I thought you liked it too.”

George shrugged. “I like it well enough.”

“Then I don’t understand. Why did you tell Mother you will be glad to leave?”

“Because that is what Mother wanted to hear, you boil-brain. ’Tis easier to be charming, Dickon. The sooner you learn that, the more you will get to do what you want. Besides, I do want to go to London.”

Dickon stopped his brother. “To an old priest’s dreary abbey? Have you eaten toadstools that have caused madness? Well, you can go, but I am not going,” and he marched ahead. “I’ll run away,” he shouted. “That will show them!”

“And anger our father?” George called after him. “He will be coming home soon, you know.”

Dickon turned. “How do you know?”

“You read the ballad. All of England is waiting for him to return—remember?

‘Send home, most gracious Lord Jesu most benign,

Send home thy true blood unto his proper vein,

Richard, duke of York…’” George recited.

Dickon nodded, but, although he desperately wanted to do something daring like run away, he was reluctant to disappoint his father. Oddly, he had fewer qualms about disappointing his mother. The chance never came, alas, for the boys learned they were to leave on the morrow, and Cecily, wanting to spend every last hour with her sons, did not let them out of her sight.

And so, once more Dickon found himself hoisted in front of a Stafford knight and bidding a forced farewell to a home he had come to know. Part of him thrilled to see London, but the child in him longed for familiar surroundings with the people he loved and, most of all, where he felt safe.