“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.”

Dickon had been trying hard to follow all of this. Yearning for Ned’s approval and not wanting to be thought ignorant, he braved: “Why will the king believe Father this time?”

“A clever question, little man. If you remember, we hold the king hostage. If Father was so ambitious for the crown, why is the king not dead?”

Dickon nodded slowly. “So, it is his loyalty that makes our father the greater man.”

Ned’s approving hand had come down hard on Dickon’s back, almost knocking the boy off his stool. “You have the measure of it, Dickon. Ambition is a fine thing, but it cannot override duty. We, as princes of the royal blood, have a duty to England first, the king, then family, and our own ambition last. ’Twas what Father taught Edmund and me, but as he is not here to teach you, I will. ’Tis what we must all abide by.”

These words would nag Dickon during his brother’s lifetime of disavowing them, especially when it came to Edward’s personal desires.

After more than a week, Meg was almost more impatient to have Cecily return than her beloved father as she found playing mother to her brothers had almost, she told her attendant Beatrice, driven her to uncork a flagon or two. Nurse Anne was getting too old to run after two boys, one of whom, she believed, should have been sent away for his knightly training long before now. And as far as she was concerned, the lads had suffered from the lack of discipline the customary military training would have provided.

“Boys at this age have no other objective than to hit each other; climb trees; throw stones at the poor crows; roll around on the grass, soiling their nice clothes; filch food from under the cook’s nose; and utter war whoops just as one is carrying something fragile,” Nurse Anne grumbled to Beatrice. “I dropped a water pitcher last week when one of them jumped out at me as I was leaving the pantry.”