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difficulty that she maintained her composure before the servants.
    “We searched the field,” said Mauley, “and found Master Edward among the dead on the slope, west of Wemberton Brook. He fought and died like the brave man he was, sword in hand.”
    He drew the broadsword he carried at his hip. “I took this from his dead hand,” he said sadly, wiping the dirty blade with the flat of his hand. “God grant that it avenges his killers.”
    They buried Edward that evening, in the little church of All Saints at Cromford village two miles from the house, where James was chaplain. James stumbled and stammered through the service, drunk as usual and failing to hold back tears. Dame Anne glared furiously at him, her eyes red-rimmed but refusing to weep. The rest of the assembled family and household knew no such restraint, and wept and prayed fervently. None more so than Mary, who begged God for revenge on her father’s killers.
    In the days after the funeral Dame Anne took to her private writing chamber, her Scriptorium as she called it. She left the care of Richard to Mary and the servants, so she could mourn her husband of thirty-two years in privacy and solitude. When she finally emerged, it was as a grand old lady, stately and severe, her well of tears run dry.
    Mary diverted her own sorrow by tending to Richard and her youngest brother, Martin. The boy crept around like a mouse, baffled by the oppressive atmosphere that had descended on Heydon Court. He refused to listen when Mary tried to explain what had happened to his father, for he was of an age when boys think their fathers indestructible.
    In the following weeks news trickled through to Heydon Court of how the world wore on outside the narrow confines of rural life.
    The factions of York and Lancaster continued to tear at each other’s throats. Despite her defeat at Blore Heath and the death of so many loyal knights and men-at-arms, the Queen remained defiant. She still had two armies in the field, commanded by the Dukes of Buckingham and Somerset. Together they outnumbered the Yorkist host that had combined at Worcester, and from where the Duke of York sent a message to King Henry justifying his actions.
    Poor slack-witted Harry the Sixth, whom in Mary’s opinion should have been a priest instead of a king, responded to York’s message by offering to pardon all those that had raised arms against him, save those that had fought at Blore Heath. York failed to reply, and so the Lancastrian host advanced to crush the rebellious Duke and his adherents.
    On a chill Wednesday morning, a young squire arrive from Stafford, bearing news that all at Heydon Court had dreaded: war was renewed.
    Dame Anne thanked the squire – he was a minor local gentleman’s son, and another admirer of her daughter’s – and sent him to the kitchen to be fed and watered. Then she turned to Mary.
    “You will write a letter to our steward,” she snapped. “He has gone to the market at Lichfield, and I wish the letter to reach him before he departs.”
    “Yes, mother,” Mary replied with a sigh, for writing letters was always a tedious and painstaking task. Both women went inside, to Dame Anne’s privy chamber, where Mary obediently sat and scratched out the letter that her mother dictated.
    To our steward, John Tanner (she wrote), from Heydon Court,
    I greet you right well, and pray you to get some crossbows and windlasses to bind them with, and quarrels, for we have those here that can shoot the longbow, but more that cannot, and must be armed. Also I would you to get two or three shortened pole-axes to keep with indoors, and as many sallets and jacks as you may.
    We are sore afraid here that the Yorkists will gain the victory, and then every loyal subject’s house shall be open to the assault and pillage of traitors. We have made bars to bar the doors crosswise, and wickets at every corner of the house to shoot out from, with crossbows and handguns (also get two or three of