And now it had happened to his father, his brother, and his uncle. It was almost too much for him to bear, and thus he forced his thoughts down more rational pathways—a trick he was to use many times in his life. He knew his kin were not traitors, and he wept to think of these beloved men so cruelly treated. He could not bring himself to hate King Henry, because in his heart he knew that gentle man would not have ordered such a monstrous thing. It must have been the She-wolf, Dickon determined; it must have been that woman in black armor who has fangs like the beast she is named for. Margaret of Anjou now became the object of his hatred.

Saving his tears for solitary walks upon the ramparts, only Traveller was witness to them as the unhappy boy wrestled with his grief and human conflicts far too complex for his comprehension, though he did his best to understand.

When it was his sister’s screams and not his own fear that awoke him one night, Dickon crept out of bed to investigate.

No one saw him slip into the room and hide behind the chair. Cecily, roused from a deep sleep by Beatrice, was sitting atop the downy bed and consoling her daughter. “Tell me about it, my dear,” Cecily soothed. “’Tis not so bad if you talk about it. And it will not come to pass if you do.”

“But it already has,” Meg said on another loud sob. “Please take these terrible dreams away.”

Dickon knew just what Meg meant. He wanted to leap on the bed and share in his mother’s consolation, but he stayed silent, recognizing that tonight it was Meggie’s turn.

“You know why your father and your brother died, Meg. They died to right a wrong done to our house, and your father knew full well the price we all might have to pay. ’Tis the price all those born of royal blood are in danger of paying. My dearest Edmund paid it, and you, too, must learn to sacrifice for your family—whether it be the house of York or that of whomever you wed…”

Sacrifice? The ominous word evoked for Dickon Abraham’s son Isaac tied down on an altar on a mountaintop in some far desert land, staring in abject terror at the knife his father held poised ready to plunge into the boy’s heart. As those biblical stories were supposed to do, it had put the fear of God into Dickon at too early and impressionable an age. He had never forgotten it.