“You will not speak to me in such a way, in my own house.” He landed blow after blow with the snapping sounds as loud as her desperate cries. No one came, though he went on and on until she was still, no longer struggling. Long red welts seeped blood to stain the fine cloth as he gasped and panted, fat beads of sweat dropping from his nose and brow onto her skin. With grim satisfaction, the earl replaced his belt and left his wife to sob into the coverlet.
—
SERVANTS OPENED THE DOOR to the marshaling yard beyond as Thomas Percy, Baron Egremont, walked out. The noise of hundreds of men crashed over him under the blue sky, making his heart beat faster. With an irritated glance, he saw members of his own staff were already there, suborned by his father and waiting patiently for him. They carried armor and his weapons, while other men worked on Balion, the great black charger he had bought for a ruinous price the previous year. It seemed his father had been in no doubt as to the outcome of their conversation. Thomas frowned as he approached the group within the milling mass of men, taking in the sheer complexity of the scene. Far above them all, he could hear his mother screaming like a butchered sow, no doubt as the old man laid into her yet again. Thomas felt only irritation that she should intrude so on his thoughts. He was forced to look down rather than suffer the unwanted intimacy of other men’s eyes. With each new wail, they either grinned or winced, while his anger at her only grew. The rise of the Neville family ate at his father, ruining the old man with suspicions and rages when the earl should have been enjoying quiet years and turning over the running of estates to his sons. As the sounds died away at last, Thomas looked up to the window of his father’s private rooms. It was typical of the old man to set his plans in motion for days or weeks without even bothering to tell his own son what he intended.
With quick, neat motions, Thomas removed his leather breastplate and cloak, stripping down in the yard to hose and undertunic, already showing patches of dark sweat. There was no modesty there and scores of young men joked and shouted to one another as they hopped with an armored boot, or called for some piece of their equipment that had found its way into someone else’s spot. Thomas seated himself on a high stool, sitting patiently while his servants worked to fasten the padded gambeson jerkin and strap him into each plate of his personal armor. It fitted him well, and if the scars and marks were from the training yard rather than a battle, it was still a good set, well worn. As he raised his arms for the breastplate to be strapped on, he glared at the marks of a scourer, the metal dulled by some kitchen girl working it like a pot. The blue and yellow crest had been obliterated and he craned his neck to see his sword where it lay ready to be handed to him. Thomas swore softly then, seeing the fine enamel badge had been chiseled from the guard. It was on his father’s orders, of course, but he had carried that sword since his twelfth birthday and it hurt to see it damaged.
Piece by piece, his armor was put on, until he stood, feeling the wonderful sense of strength and invulnerability it brought. Lord Egremont reached for the helmet his steward held out reverently to him. As he rammed it onto his head, Thomas heard the voice of his father’s swordmaster echoing across the marshaling yard.
“When the gate opens, we are gone,” Trunning shouted to the gathered men. “Be ready, for there’ll be no riding back like lady’s maids after a dropped glove. No personal servants beyond those with mounts who can hold a sword or a bow and keep up. Dried beef and raw oats, a little ale and wine, no more! Provisions for six days, but ride light, or be left behind.”
Trunning paused, his gaze sweeping across the knights and men as he readied himself to give another half-dozen instructions. He caught sight of the Percy son and moved on the instant to come to his side. It gave Thomas some small satisfaction to look down on the shorter man.
“What is it, Trunning?” he said, deliberately keeping his voice cold. Trunning didn’t reply at first, just stood, looking him over and chewing the white mustache that drooped over his lips. His father’s swordmaster had trained both Percy sons in weapons and tactics, beginning so early in their lives that Thomas could not remember a time he had not been there, shouting in anger at some poor stroke, or demanding to know who had taught him to hold a shield “like a Scots maid.” With no effort of memory, Thomas could recall five bones broken by the red-faced little man over the years: two in his right hand, two cracked forearms, and a small bone in his foot where Trunning had once stamped down in a tussle. Each one had meant weeks of pain in splints and withering scorn for every groan he made while they were bound. It was not that Thomas hated or even feared his father’s man. He knew Trunning was intensely loyal to the house of Percy and Northumberland, like a particularly savage old hound. Yet for all the differences in their station, Thomas, Lord Egremont, could not imagine the man ever accepting him as an equal, never mind his superior. The very fact that his father had placed Trunning in command of the raid was proof of that. The pair of old bastards were cut from the same rough cloth, with not a drop of kindness or mercy in either of them. It was no wonder they got on so well.
“Your father has talked to you, then? Told you the way of it?” Trunning said at last. “Has he said to mark my orders in all things, to bring you safe home with a couple of new scratches on that fine armor of yours?”
Thomas repressed a shudder at the man’s voice. Perhaps the result of so many years bawling across fields and streets at those he trained, Trunning was always hoarse, his spoken words mingling with deep, wheezing breaths.
“He has told me you will command, Trunning, yes. To a point.”
Trunning blinked lazily, weighing him up.
“And what point would that be, my noble lord Egremont?”
To his dismay, Thomas felt his heart hammer in his chest and his own breathing grow tight. He hoped the swordmaster could not sense the strain in him, though it was near certain after knowing him for so long. Nonetheless, he spoke firmly, determined not to let his father’s man rule him.
“The point where you and I disagree, Trunning. The honor of the house is mine to guard and protect. You may give orders to march and to attack and so forth, but I will consider the policy, the aims of what we are about.”
Trunning stared at him, tilting his head and rubbing at a spot above his right eye.
“If I tell your father you are chafing, he’ll make you come along as a pot-boy, if at all,” he said, smiling unpleasantly. He was surprised when the young man turned to face him fully, leaning down.
“If you carry tales to the old man, I will stay. See how far you get from the gates without a son of the Percy family at the head. And then, Trunning, you’ll have made an enemy of Egremont. Now I’ve told you my terms. You do as you please.”
Thomas deliberately turned back to his servants then, beckoning for them to adjust and add a drop of oil to his visor. He felt Trunning’s gaze and his heart continued to race, but he was certain of himself, in that one thing. He did not look round when the swordmaster stalked off, not even to see if Trunning would march into the castle and take his complaints to his father. Lord Egremont lowered his visor to conceal his expression. His father and Trunning were both old men and, for all their will and spite, old men fell away in the end. Thomas would take the archers and the swordsmen against his uncle’s wedding party, either with Trunning or without him it mattered not at all. He looked again at the small army his father had called to Percy service. Hundreds were no more than town men, summoned by their feudal lord. Yet whether they worked as smith, butcher, or tanner, each of them had trained with ax or bow from their earliest years, developing skills that would make them useful to a man like Earl Percy of Alnwick. Thomas smiled to himself, raising his visor once again.
“Form on the gate!” he roared at them. From the corner of his eye, he saw Trunning’s trim shape jerk round, but Thomas ignored him. Old men fell away, he told himself again, with satisfaction. Young men came to rule.
CHAPTER 2
/> Derry Brewer was in a foul mood. The rain poured down in sheets, drumming against the bald dome of his head. He had never realized before how a good head of hair really soaked up the rain. With his pate so cruelly exposed, the dreadful pattering made his skull ache and his ears itch. To add to his discomfort, he wore a sodden brown robe that slapped wetly against his bare shanks, chafing the skin. His head had been shaved by a fairly expert hand just that morning, so that it still felt new and sore and appallingly exposed to the elements. The friars trudging along with him were all tonsured, the white circles of scalp gleaming wetly in the gloom. As far as Derry could tell, none of them had eaten a morsel of food since dawn, though they had walked and chanted all day.
The great walls of the royal castle lay ahead up Peascod Street as they rang their bell for alms and prayed aloud, the only ones foolish enough to stand out in the rain when there was shelter to be had. Windsor was a wealthy town; the castle it existed to serve was only twenty miles from London, like half a dozen others around the capital, each a day’s march apart. The presence of the king’s household had brought some of the very best goldsmiths, jewelers, vintners, and mercers out of the capital city, eager to sell their wares. With the king himself in residence, more than eight hundred men and women in his service swelled the crowds and raised the prices of everything from bread and wine to a gold bracelet.
In his sour humor, Derry assumed Franciscan friars would be attracted by the flow of coins as well. He was still unsure if his grubby companions were not just rather clever beggars. It was true Brother Peter harangued the crowds for their iniquity and greed, but the rest of the friars all carried knives to sell as well as begging bowls. One wide-shouldered unfortunate seemed resigned to his role among them as the carrier of a large grindstone. Silent Godwin walked with it on his back, tied on with twine and so bowed down that he could hardly look up to see where he was going. The others said he endured the weight as penance for some past sin and Derry had not dared ask what it had been.
At the intervals of abbey services throughout the day, the group would stop and pray, accepting offers of water or home-brewed beer brought out to them as they assembled a treadle and set the stone spinning, sharpening knives and blessing those who passed over a coin, no matter how small. Derry felt a pang of guilt about the tight leather purse he wore snug and close to his groin. He had silver enough in there to feed them all to bursting, but if he brought it out, he suspected Brother Peter would give it away to some undeserving sod and leave the monks to starve. Derry puffed out his cheeks, wiping rain from his eyes. It washed down his face in a constant stream, so that he had to blink through a blur.
It had seemed like a good idea to join them four nights before. As a result of their humble trade, the group of fourteen monks were all armed. They were also used to nights on the road where thieves might try to steal even from those who had nothing. Derry had been lurking in the stables of a cheap tavern when he’d overheard Brother Peter talking about Windsor, where they would pray for the king’s recovery. None of them had been surprised another traveler would want to do the same, not with the king’s soul in peril and all the country so beset with violent men.
Derry sighed to himself, rubbing hard at his face. He sneezed explosively and caught himself opening his mouth to curse. Brother Peter had taken a stick to a miller just that morning for shouting a blasphemy on the open street. It had been Derry’s pleasure to see the meek leader of the group exercise a wrath that would have made him a minor name in the fight rings of London. They’d left the miller in the road, his ears leaking blood from the battering he’d received, his cart overturned and his flour bags all broken. Derry smiled at the memory, glancing over to where Brother Peter walked, sounding his bell every thirteenth step so that it echoed back from the stone walls at the top of the hill.
The castle loomed in the rain, there was no other way to describe it. The massive walls and round baileys had never been breached in the centuries since the first stones had been laid. King Henry’s stronghold squatted over Windsor, almost another town within the first, home to hundreds. Derry stared upward, his feet aching on the cobbles.
It was almost time to leave the little group of monks and Derry wondered how best to broach the subject. Brother Peter had been astonished at his request to be tonsured as the other men. Though they accepted it for themselves as a rebuke of vanity, there was no need at all for Derry to adopt the style. It had taken all Derry’s persuasive skill before the older man allowed he could do as he pleased with his own head.
The young friar who had taken a razor to Derry’s thick hair had managed to cut his scalp twice and scrape away a piece of skin the size of a penny right on the crown. Derry had endured it all with barely a grunt of complaint, finally earning a satisfied pat on the back from Brother Peter.
In the downpour, Derry wondered if it had been worth it. He was thin and worn-down already. In an old robe, he might have passed with his head unshaven, but the stakes were the highest and the men hunting him had already shown their determination and ruthlessness, more than once. With a sigh, he told himself once again that it was a price worth paying, though he could not remember his spirits ever being lower in all his life.
Being the avowed enemy of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, was not something he had chosen for himself. When he looked back on his dealings, Derry supposed he could have been more conciliatory. The man who had trained him would have wagged a finger in reproof at the pride he’d shown. Old Bertle would have lectured him for hours, saying that a man’s enemies must never see your strength, never. Derry could almost hear the old boy’s exasperated voice as he trudged up the hill. If they believe you are weak, they don’t send hard, killing men from London to track you down. They don’t pay silver to every rumormonger for news of your whereabouts. They don’t put a price on your head, Derry!
Becoming a Franciscan for a time may have saved his neck, or simply wasted a few days, he’d never know. It was certainly true that Derry had passed groups of hostile-looking men while he’d walked with the monks, men who’d laughed and jeered and turned away as Brother Peter asked them for a coin. Any one of them or a dozen might have been in the pay of York, Derry had no way of knowing. He’d kept his gaze on the ground, trudging along with the others.
The rain ceased for a time, though thunder grumbled nearby and dark clouds still rushed overhead. Brother Peter chose that moment of quiet to place one hand on the clapper of his bell and raise the other to halt the shivering group.
“Brothers, the sun is setting and the ground is too wet to sleep in the open tonight. I know a family on the far side of town, not a mile further, over the crest of Castle Hill. They will allow us to use their barn to sleep and eat, in return for blessings on their house and joining us in prayer.”
The monks cheered up visibly at his words. Derry realized he had developed at least a whisper of respect for the odd life they led. With the exception of the bull-like mass of Silent Godwin, none of them looked strong. He suspected one or two saw the mendicant life as better than working, but then they did take their poverty seriously, in an age where every other man was working to get away from that miserable estate. Derry cleared his throat, stifling a cough that he’d developed somewhere in the wet and cold.
“Brother Peter, might I have a word with you?” he said.
The leader of their little group turned back immediately, his expression placid.
“Of course, Derry,” he said.
The older man’s lips were blue. Derry thought again of the fat purse tucked warm against his testicles.
“I . . . um . . . I won’t be going on with you,” Derry said, looking down at his feet rather than witness the disappointment he knew would be there in the monk’s face. “There’s a man I must meet at the castle. I’ll be stopping there for a time.”
“Ah,” Brother Peter replied. “Well, Derry, you’ll go with God’s blessing at least.”
/> To Derry’s surprise, the older man reached out and placed his hand on the sore skin of his crown, bowing his head with gentle pressure. He endured it, strangely moved by the old man’s faith as Brother Peter called on Saint Christopher and Saint Francis to guide him in his travels and trials ahead.
“Thank you, Brother Peter. It has been an honor.”
The older man smiled at him then, letting his hand fall away.
“I just hope those you seek to avoid have the sun in their eyes, Derry. I will pray that they are as blind as Saul of Tarsus when you pass by.”
Derry blinked at him in surprise, making Brother Peter chuckle.
“Not many of those who join us insist on a tonsure after just a day or two on the road, Derry. Still, I dare say it did you no harm, despite Brother John’s roughness with the blade.”
Derry stared at him, amused despite his discomforts.
“I did wonder, Brother, how it is that some of you have a circle no more than three fingers wide on your pates, while I seem to have been shaved right down to the ears.”
Brother Peter’s dark eyes glinted then.
“That was my decision, Derry. I thought if a man was so very keen to have a tonsure, we should perhaps indulge his desire to the utmost. Forgive me, my son, if you would.”
“Of course, Brother Peter. You have brought me here safe and well.”
On impulse, Derry hitched up his robe and reached deeply inside the folds, bringing out his purse. He pressed it into Brother Peter’s hands, folding the fingers over the damp leather.