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and hedges lifted up their emerald crowns beneath an endless sky.
    Numerous reports confirmed the king’s army was on the trail of McMurrough, but always, the rebel was one slippery step ahead. Then they stumbled upon him almost by accident. An Irishman from the nearby village with a grudge against McMurrough decided to take advantage of the king’s presence and revealed McMurrough’s whereabouts. A small party of scouts on the swiftest horses rode on ahead to find him. Meanwhile, the English pressed on as fast as they could, their pace hampered by the king’s wagon train. It was a short hour later that one of the scouts returned to the king’s army.
    The breathless soldier dropped from his saddle before his horse had even completely stopped. Sweat poured from his jaw line, drenching the front of his shirt. He bowed hastily before the king, who was enthroned upon his gray destrier, then looked up uneasily. “Sire.” His eyes plunged. “We lost him. Over the next ridge. By the time we reached the place we had last seen him, there was no trace. Three rivers converged nearby. He could have crossed any one of them to hide his tracks.”
    With pinched lips, Richard studied the countryside. Beyond the nearest line of hillocks, the rambling edge of a thick forest wandered. The tree trunks stood like the masts of ships, firmly entrenched, their leafy sails buffeted by the hot, insistent wind. He clenched his reins, feeling the earth tip beneath him. A queasiness reminiscent of his channel crossing soured his stomach. He choked back the bitterness. “So hunt him down. However long it takes. Bring him back to me.”
    “We tried, sire, but... the ground has been used for grazing cattle recently. The tracks will be hard to find—if there are any. And there are several more streams to swallow up hoof prints by the score, as well as forest trails leading in a dozen directions. He knows this land too well and we not at all.”
    “You failed?” Richard resisted the urge to strike the man.
    Beside him, Harry, fourteen years of age, spoke out. “Burn the closest village.”
    Richard’s eyes snapped toward him. “What?”
    Above a dimpled chin, Harry’s angelic mouth curved into a smile. “If you can’t shackle the criminal, punish him otherwise.”
    “M’lord?” Thomas, Duke of Surrey and the king’s nephew through his mother’s second marriage, edged his horse closer. “It was a villager who led us to McMurrough. If we burn it...”
    Richard dabbed at his upper lip with a kerchief. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea, but he wasn’t about to go back to England without making some sort of statement that rebellion came with consequences. “Perhaps it was all a ruse, Thomas? Carefully planned from the very beginning. They think to mock their king. My young cousin here is a clever lad. Do as he says: burn the village.”
    An hour later, as Richard rode on to Dublin at the head of his army, the smoke of burning thatch blotted out the sun.
     
     
    Dublin, Ireland — June, 1399
     
    Young Harry was sitting cross-legged on his bed in Dublin Castle, bent over a cherished copy of Troilus and Cressida , when the king rushed into his private chamber at well past Compline, startling him. They had been ensconced in Dublin for nearly two months now, with no apparent cause keeping them there. Already, Harry had begun to feel himself a prisoner of circumstance, subjected to Richard’s increasingly unpredictable moods.
    The lamplight drew long shadows on Richard’s thinning face. The corners of his mouth were weighed down with a hundred years’ worry. He trailed his hand along the rough stone wall. “Oh, poor Harry. Do you know what your father has done?”
    Harry closed his book, studying the king. Yes, he knew. Half the world knew by then. Henry of Bolingbroke had set sail from Boulogne and landed at Ravenspur at the Mouth of the Humber earlier that month. He had then headed toward Pontefract in the north and along the way