He remembered at age five when, following a tussle in the nursery with George, Nurse Anne had soothed his wounded pride one day as she rubbed salve into an ugly blue-green bruise on his arm. “You must sometimes endure pain to grow strong, mon petit,” she told him then in her soft Norman tongue. “You have la peine of being the youngest. Often it is the hardest place in the family, tu comprends?”

He had understood only too well: he would never match up to his three brothers. There was extrovert Edward, then fifteen and by now a warrior of a prince standing more than six feet; gentler Edmund, Edward’s junior by only a year but equally strapping; and eight-year-old George, a head taller than his youngest sibling and already well aware of his good looks and charm. Even more aggravating to Dickon, because she was a girl, his sister Margaret had inherited the Neville height. Was it any wonder Dickon spent his time at Mass praying that he would grow big and tall, too? As the fourth boy with no particular charm or good looks, what chance did he have to be noticed by his powerful father and beautiful mother? He thought his mother loved him well enough, but with seven living children with whom to share her love, he felt sure his portion was the smallest—and yet he yearned to be her favorite. As for his noble father: aye, he would tousle Dickon’s mop of darkening hair and occasionally bring him a gift, but he rarely visited the nursery and, it seemed to Dickon, would heap praise on George for no good reason while believing his brother’s tattle-telling. Pleasing his father was all young Dickon craved.

Ned and Edmund had protected Dickon for those first few years, but now they were gone, and, as was the custom for noblemen’s sons, they were living with their own households in far away Ludlow on the Welsh borders, learning to be leaders of men. Dickon hardly remembered anything about them except for a large presence when they had visited the nursery. And he was certain they now did not give him a thought.

Why, there were those dark days when the little boy wished he had not been born at all!