“Father has come!” Meg exclaimed. “It must be.” And she lifted her voluminous skirts and started up the stairs. Dickon and George grasped each other’s shoulders and were jumping up and down making Ambergris bark when Cecily appeared at the head of the staircase.

The lines of worry and the pain of the past year’s separation had fled her now radiant face as she looked down on her children. Dickon had always known his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, but now she seemed to glow. “Your father is at Chester, my dears, praise be to God,” Cecily called to them. “Aye, ’tis worthy of jumping for joy.” She laughed like a girl, her cheeks flushing. Dickon was too young to recognize love, but her radiance moved him.

After seeing his mother safely onto the road west to meet her husband, Ned sat his siblings down one evening and prepared them for their father’s homecoming. He explained what had led up to the retreat at Ludlow, and why it was now time for their father to assert his position with the king once and for all. It took a patient Ned to draw up a chart of the Plantagenet family tree and show how, in fact, York’s claim to the throne of England was stronger than the Lancastrian Henry’s.

“So Father should be king?” Meg had asked after studying the makeshift chart. “But Henry is God’s anointed, and as Father swore fealty to him, he cannot wear the crown. Is that not so, Ned?”

“Aye, Meg, and we Yorks do not break our vows. As he has said, he has no ambition to wear the crown.” More’s the pity, Edward secretly thought. “Indeed, all these years, Father has attempted and failed to remove the bad counselors governing England because our saintly king is too weak to deny them. Each time he has tried to take his place as Henry’s chief counselor, the others have poisoned the king against him with the help of Queen Margaret, who has more aggression in her little finger than her husband in his entire body. ’Tis she who rules Henry and thus the council, and she fears Father’s claim to the throne.”

“Why does Father not simply tell Parliament that he is the rightful king?” George demanded. “Then we would be heirs to the crown—not that lily-livered Edouard of Lancaster.”

The boy was always thinking of himself, Edward had noticed during his visits; it was one of George’s least charming traits. It was Dickon who was growing into the more reliable younger brother.

“As I said only a few minutes ago, George, Father will not break his oath to the king,” Ned insisted, attempting to curb George’s ambitions. “Besides which, we all wish to prove to the English people that despite our attainders, we are still loyal subjects of the crown. We are not traitors. We have been wronged yet wish to do right. If we were the villains Queen Margaret would have everyone believe we are, why then, after our victory at Northampton, did we not simply kill the king and take the throne? Instead, Henry is still our liege lord, and now, from a position of strength, Father can return to give the king obeisance and persuade him to be rid of the likes of Exeter and Somerset for the good of England.”