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Edward and Hugh Despencer took up residence at Gloucester. From there the king issued a warning that the Marchers were not to attack the Despencers’ holdings. On the last day of March, the king summoned them to Gloucester.
    When the Marcher barons ignored the summons, Edward then ordered them to convene at Gloucester the second week of April.
    Roger Mortimer consulted with the other Marcher barons in Hereford’s castle war room. They were amused that the king had summoned them twice. “Give me suggestions for our reply.”
    â€œAnswer the summons with a legitimate reason why the Marcher barons will not attend the king,” Warwick advised.
    â€œTell Edward that we refuse to come into his presence while Hugh Despencer remains in his company,” Hereford suggested.
    Mortimer put pen to paper immediately. “Excellent idea. It’s time we made some demands of our own.”
    Wolf spoke up. “Insult their pride, if they have any. Demand that Hugh Despencer be placed in Thomas of Lancaster’s custody until Parliament can hear our grievances.”
    Laughter reverberated around the room, as Mortimer and Hereford, the two leading Marcher barons, signed their demands with a flourish. They were all spoiling for a fight and hoped to get one by baiting Edward and his lover.
    It did the trick. When the king read the insulting letter, he issued a writ confiscating all of the estates that belonged to Hugh Audley and his wife, Margaret of Gloucester, and gave them to Hugh Despencer.
    The Marcher barons retaliated swiftly. On the first day of May they launched a devastating attack on Despencer lands in south Wales. By the middle of May, Mortimer and the vast Marcher army had taken back the castles of Caerphilly, Cardiff, and Newport. Then they swept across Glamorgan and Gloucestershire with fire and sword, burning newly planted crops and ravaging all the property that the greedy Despencers had accumulated. They took possession of sixty-three manors and seized thousands of sheep, hogs, oxen, cattle and five hundred horses.
    Wolf Mortimer began to notice that young Guy Thomas de Beauchamp sought his company at night around the campfires. The boy was eager for advice to improve his fighting skills and it was apparent to Wolf that the young lad wanted to emulate him. Wolf was patient and explained the best tactics to employ in a castle raid, but knew the safest place for Guy Thomas was riding alongside Warwick where his father’s vigilance would protect him.
    Young de Beauchamp showed little fear and one afternoon as they rode toward Whitney Castle, Wolf Mortimer saw that Guy Thomas was at the head of the pack and Warwick was nowhere in sight. The men on the walls began to shoot at their attackers, using flaming arrows that had been dipped in pitch and set alight.
    Wolf’s mouth went dry. He crouched low in the saddle, set his spurs to his mount, and thundered across the turf in a direct path to de Beauchamp. Just as he arrived a flaming arrow thunked into Guy Thomas’s saddle. It missed the lad by an inch, but set ablaze his hair that was hanging below his helmet.
    Wolf, gripping his mount with his knees, plucked out the arrow with one hand, snatched up the horse’s reins with the other, and rode as if the devil himself were after them. When they were a safe distance from the castle, Wolf knocked the lad from the saddle, jumped down, and rolled him on the ground to smother the sparks that still smoldered in his hair.
    â€œYou have more guts than brains!” Wolf growled.
    A white-faced Guy Thomas stared up into the gray eyes of the man straddling him. “Don’t tell my father.”
    Wolf pulled off Guy’s scorched helmet. “I won’t tell him that you were reckless enough to reach the castle before the others.”
    Guy Thomas grinned, gingerly touching his burned neck. “I’ll tell him that—don’t tell him I was too slow to dodge the