Meg showed quiet anger at her father’s demeaning death, and Cecily admired her daughter’s composure. How grown up she suddenly seemed, and it filled Cecily with sadness that Richard would not see his favorite daughter grow into womanhood. How Richard would have been proud of her, Cecily thought. Anyone but Cecily might have recognized her own indomitable spirit in Margaret, but Cecily was not so vainglorious as to acknowledge it.

The boys too listened with mingled horror and grief to the the story of the paper crown that was mockingly placed on Richard’s head before he was beheaded. Later, there came the impaling of the Yorkist leaders’ heads upon York’s Micklegate. As though those scenes were not enough to horrify the children, their reaction was mild compared to the terror and outrage they expressed upon hearing of their brother’s vile murder while fleeing the battle.

“Edmund hid beneath a bridge but the soldiers found him and dragged him out to face that devil’s spawn Lord Clifford.” Meg gave a little cry, and George plugged his ears, but Cecily thought it best not to spare her offspring; it was the only way to prepare them for what life was really like. “Edmund pleaded for his life, as did poor, dear Master Apsall. What could a tutor do to defend them both, I ask you?” Why had Richard allowed the old man on the battlefield at all, she wondered. “Such senseless slaughter of innocents!” she exclaimed.

Dickon had buried his head in a cushion by this time, his mother’s words conjuring the young billman who had expired in his arms at Ludlow from his hideous wounds. Dear, kind Edmund had died like that, Dickon realized, and so might he one day. He muttered a muffled, “Nay, say no more,” but Cecily was relentless and could not stop now. “’Twas the cowardly Clifford’s own hand that thrust the knife into your brother’s innocent heart, declaring, ‘This is for my father whom your father slew at St. Alban’s.’ And then he dispensed Master Apsall in like manner. What kind of man kills a defenseless boy and an old man?”

She did not accuse her husband outright in front of his children for allowing Edmund to fight. However, she would never stop blaming him for taking Edmund north. He was only seventeen, she kept repeating to herself. Her son’s brutal death would haunt her dreams all through her long life.