‘I will not fail you again, Richard,’ Edward said. His voice was no louder than the sound of falling snow. ‘My wife had the luck or the determination to find sanctuary. And I have a son now, an heir. So we’ll not stop, once we have begun. As you say. Not till you and I are the only ones left.’
George, Duke of Clarence, looked up in gaping confusion at the stranger with the boldfaced nerve to hail him, looking for all the world like one of those who lived wild in the hedgerows, or perhaps a cave, like the hermits of old. Seething, Clarence reined in, letting the deer he had been chasing vanish into the undergrowth.
‘My lord Clarence, would you be so kind as to grant me a moment and a few words, perhaps for the sake of your dear brothers, as one who supported them in all they did?’
The duke frowned at the accent of Ireland. The man was grinning at him and George jerked round in his saddle, suddenly convinced he and his men were about to come under attack.
‘Your Grace! There is no cause for alarm. I assure you, my lord Clarence, there is no threat. I am unarmed and helpless, though I bring word to you from friends.’
‘If you are a beggar, you have just cost me a fine buck for my table, on my own land,’ Clarence retorted. ‘I believe I will have something of yours instead. Bring me one of this fellow’s ears, Sir Edgar.’
The knight in question dismounted with easy grace, though the man wore half-armour and mail. He pulled one of his gauntlets off and slid a long dagger from a saddle sheath. Suddenly afraid, the Irishman blanched beneath his dirt, backing away until bracken and brambles pressed him from behind. He was about as ready to bolt as the deer.
‘My lord, I was told you would hear me alone. I bring word from your brothers!’
‘Ah, I see,’ Clarence replied. ‘Then it is a shame I do not wish to hear from my brothers. Go on, Sir Edgar. Take his ear in exchange for my buck. It will make him think twice before he ruins my hunting again.’
The man tried to jerk away but he was knocked down with one blow to his stomach, then knelt upon, crying out in agony as one of his ears was cut free. The knight held it up to Clarence as its previous owner scrambled up, staring in shock and pain. Blood sheeted down his neck and he held his hand clamped to the side of his head.
‘Go on your way now, tinker,’ Clarence called to him as he dug in his heels. ‘Be thankful I have left you your life.’
The Irishman watched in dull hatred as the one who had cut him mounted once again. Sir Edgar peered in curiosity at the red scrap he held, then tossed it into the brambles and followed his master.
Margaret of Anjou looked over to King Louis, inclining her head to him. The January sun streamed in through glass windows, cold outside, but somehow warming the room. It was like magic in such a bitter season, with spring still on the way. She raised her face to that light, closing her eyes and breathing deeply.
‘Can you feel it, Your Majesty?’ she asked.
‘The warmth, my dear? I can, of course. This palace is a wonder of artifice; there is nowhere like it in the entire world, I am told. It is said some buildings of the east are made of pure glass, but I think that is fancy, to be dismissed with stories of great lizards and giants.’
Margaret smiled at the little man, so full of vim and vigour. She enjoyed the king’s company, though she had not seen a great deal of him during her first years, when she had had no value. Margaret was wise enough to know that she had only become useful to his plans when Warwick fell out with Edward of York. It had been the French king’s plan to force a reconciliation between Warwick and herself then – and he had succeeded.
Once more, she bowed her head to him. He did not need to be told her thoughts or indeed her admiration. King Louis saw all, as he liked to claim. If he had a skill, it was simply the ability to read the emotions and lies of those around him, to see them for what they were. The knack of it might have made him a fortune in commerce, but he had been born above such grubby concerns. Instead, his talent had kept his throne for him – and sent Edward of York tumbling down from his. The thought was still a delight to Margaret. She felt her dimples appear and a faint flush darken her neck.
‘Your Majesty, I meant to ask if you could feel the tension in this moment, this day. My son was married before Christmas to Ann of Warwick. The men of York are gone from England. My son and I are … poised now, Your Majesty, to step across the sea and take back all that was stolen from us, to be your sure and certain allies for all the years of life ahead. Who knows? To form such a bond that our two countries might remain as friends for ever.’
‘And yet you are afraid, Margaret,’ Louis said, his eyes crinkling in gentle amusement. ‘You are just that single step away and you do not trust me yet to bring it about?’
‘Oh, Your Majesty, how could I not?’ she protested. ‘You arranged it all – for Warwick to come to me, for us to lay aside old sins and begin anew, with fresh vows sworn on a relict of the true cross.’
The French king rose from the table and walked the length of it to take her hands in his own.
‘Margaret, you have suffered greatly and borne it with the dignity of a grande dame. Your husband betrayed and imprisoned, yourself and your son banished. Of course you are afraid, to be so close to seeing it returned. Is it too perfect? Too great a justice for you to see your enemies cast down? To imagine Edward of York suffering and despairing as I do not doubt you suffered in the first years?’
For reasons she could not fully understand, Margaret felt some part of her resistance, her battlements crumble. Tears came to her eyes where she had thought they might remain dry for the rest of her life. Louis smiled to see a woman weep with strong emotion, though he hid from her his peculiar arousal at the sight, it not being particularly useful at that moment.
‘My dear,’ he said, holding her hands tighter. ‘I understand your caution. You have seen so much betrayal that you cannot shake your fears. I assure you your husband, Henry, is once more in fine rooms, being tended by servants. One or two of the staff in that little palace in London write to me to pass on news, you understand? I imagine it is the same here in Paris. I sometimes think all the ships that sail between England and France are just filled with the letters of our people, all spying on each other and scribbling down what they hear.’ He sighed to himself, looking away from her. Some animating spark went out of him as his desire faded.
‘Now, my dear, listen to me. Send your own letters to Earl Warwick, or to those lords who loved you and were most loyal. Tell them you will come in a ship with an honour guard of my best men, a hundred, no – two hundred to guard your safety so you will not bruise your foot on a loose stone. My authority will keep you and your son safe, my lady, until you are in London once more. Until that day, until you are ready, you are my guest still and you may remain for as long as you wish.’
Margaret felt his grip on her hands lessen and let his dry skin slip over hers. She looked up at the sunlight through the glass once again, reminded that his concern had been to break King Edward, who favoured a traitorous duke of Burgundy over a king of France. That had been the insult Louis had repaid a thousandfold, no other. Margaret’s fate, with that of her son and Lancaster, had been always a mere shadow of the rest.
She allowed her lips to part and breath to ease silently out. The king saw her acceptance and he smiled at her, unseen. Once Lancaster had settled itself and England was quiet, Louis knew he would be able to turn his hand and his power against the usurper in Burgundy, Charles le Téméraire.
Louis remembered a vase he had seen once. It had been a small thing, delicate in white and blue. It had been far too ugly for display, though it had been painted and fired in some impossibly distant realm of the east, where khans and satraps ruled. It had been secured with tiny bars of metal, a piece of pottery considered so valuable that it had been worth saving, even when shattered. Piece by piece, a master craftsman had put it back together, with glue and metal and months or years of his time. Louis nodded to himself. His reward would be greater
: France unified under one crown, England a steady ally. He only wished his father could have lived to see him make so much of the pieces he had been given.
George, Duke of Clarence, opened his eyes in the darkness. He felt a cold line lying across his throat, and when a voice whispered in his ear he was consumed with such terror that he stiffened in the bed, arching up so that only his head and his heels still touched. Next to him, his wife, Isabel, slept restlessly, sprawled across the covers.
‘If you move, at all, I will cut your throat. They’ll find you staring at the ceiling in the morning.’
Clarence recovered slowly from his first shock, lowering back down so that he lay more normally. There was very little light from stars outside the window. There was no moon and the man in his bedchamber was just a blot, hunched over at his side. George breathed more shallowly when he smelled blood on the air, coming from the fellow. Blood and bracken. He felt fresh sweat break out all over him, forming beads.
‘Now, Your Grace, I was told to pass a message to you and I will do so, though I have a mind to cut you for taking my ear.’ Despite the need for caution, the Irishman’s voice grew louder as he spoke, as if he could barely keep his anger in check. In her sleep, Isabel murmured something and both men froze.
‘You don’t understand,’ Clarence whispered back. He began to turn his head, but froze as he felt the movement cause a sting and a trickle of warmth. ‘You don’t know Derry Brewer, the king’s spymaster. He has men everywhere, listening. I could not let you come to me with other men there to report every word to him.’
The pressure of the knife blade increased for a moment, almost as if the man wanted him to stay still while he thought. Clarence swallowed and felt his Adam’s apple move uncomfortably against the blade. Isabel groaned in her sleep, half turning without waking up, and he thought his heart would beat right out of his chest. Clarence could feel the softness of her breasts resting against his left arm. Ludicrously, with his life hanging in the balance, he could feel arousal stirring. It really could not have been a worse time.
‘God knows, I’d rather kill you,’ the Irish voice hissed, unaware of his burning embarrassment. ‘But I’ve been paid and I am a man of my word. Just sit still and listen.’ Silence fell once more until Clarence could hear his wife’s rhythmic breathing, not quite a snore but deep and burred in her throat.
‘Your brothers will come home, to roost. Soon, though they have not trusted me with the date. When they stand in England once again, they want you to remember that Warwick will never make you king. He has married his second girl to Edward of Lancaster and, by all accounts, he is a fine and fertile young man. You have tied your colours to the wrong horse.’
Clarence blinked hard in the darkness, pleased the stranger could not see him. His betrayal of his brothers had been from rage and loss – and yet he missed them still. Great passions were hard for him to keep aflame and always had been. His instinct was to forgive and let old pains drift away on the breeze. He heard Richard’s dry tone in the words the man had memorized, or perhaps Edward’s briskness. He yearned to be returned to their trust.
He thought again of the young woman sleeping at his side, Warwick’s oldest daughter. Clarence could say truthfully that he loved her, and she him. Yet would it remain so if he betrayed her father? Who could say if she would ever come willingly to his bed again? If he turned back to York, she might hate him with the same poisonous vigour she had previously reserved for Edward and his wife, Elizabeth. Clarence clenched his fists in the darkness. His marriage or his brothers. One side or the other.
‘What do they want me to do?’ he whispered.
‘Just to consider where your loyalty should lie. This is a passing season. It will all be settled in battle – and you know Edward of York will not lose on the field. Gather your men and be ready to march to our side. If you do, you will be pardoned and restored – or damned and destroyed if you do not. Now go with God, Brother. But come with us.’ The Irishman’s voice changed subtly as he came to the end of the passages he had committed to memory, becoming angry once more from the throbbing pain and sickness he felt from his injury. Clarence’s eyes had adjusted enough by then to see the man’s head was swathed in cloth, bulbous and misshapen in the darkness.
‘There is a pouch of coins on the dresser,’ Clarence said softly. ‘Take it in payment for your wound. I have heard you.’ There was a faint chink as the man found the silk bag with questing fingers, though the knife against his skin did not move. It was odd how he could no longer feel the cold of it, Clarence thought. His skin had warmed the steel.
‘Will you send an answer?’ came the man’s voice. Clarence lay still, looking up at blackness.
‘What? Would they accept my word? They do not know my heart and they will not, no matter what I tell you tonight. I command three thousand men, sir. They are my word, when they move. Now, goodnight. You have disturbed my sleep for too long.’
For an instant, the pressure of the blade seemed to increase and Clarence flinched in the dark, taking a breath. Then it vanished and he heard a creak as the window casement was eased open and the shadow vanished through it once more. He turned then, to run a hopeful hand over his wife’s breasts until she grumbled something unintelligible and presented her back to him. After that, he lay in wakeful silence until it was time to rise for the day.
9
March opened in cold winds and miserable, gusting rain. The English Channel had been a grey hell for most of February. Storms had battered the coasts of France and England, beating at the merchant fleets so that they were forced to abandon trade and cluster in sheltered harbours, away from the open sea. French warships waited on the deepwater moorings of the Seine, miles from the ocean, ready to escort Margaret and her son to England once again. Further north and east, stung by gales, the ships of Burgundy rocked and groaned at anchor. There were hundreds of islands in the archipelago where they had been gathered. Over the winter months, dozens of ships had been towed in, one by one, hidden from view and the knowledge of man. There, on green and mildewed shores, Duke Charles had assembled an invasion force for the house of York.
The air was cold and the sunlight weak as silent regiments in mail and leather trudged aboard moored ships, all along the quays. A few of the officers wore falchion blades in tight leather wraps on their hips. The rest might take up pikes or billhooks, or even a few English pollaxes that had found their way into the canvas bundles. The weapons had gone on board in huge cloth rolls that were already stained with rust. The pitting was all on the surface then. By the time the weapons had rusted to weakness, the war would be settled.
Perhaps eight hundred men still waited in small groups to join their ships and sail to a land from which they knew they might not return. The mood was subdued at the prospect, with all the clicks and rattles of men in battle array, checking their equipment with patting gauntlets, or swearing softly as they realized they had forgotten something vital.
Edward walked up a gangplank to his flagship, the Mark Antony, making the planking bend into a curve under his armoured weight. He cast a nervous glance at the water as he passed over it, knowing that if he fell in, there would be no rising once again from those depths. He reached for the polished wooden rail as he stepped into the waist of the warship, looking about him with stern interest. The Mark Antony was the personal property of the Burgundian admiral and well appointed in whitened oak and polished brass. Some thirty men had gathered on both fore- and aftcastles as well as the main deck. Others clung to the ropes like hanged thieves, craning to see the king of England who would send them into battle on a foreign shore. He heard one of the horses whinny below, sensing some rising note in the crew that made it kick its tiny stall.
Edward met the gaze of every man with deliberate confidence, looking around slowly so that they could all say he had looked them in the eye and they’d felt the strength of his will. Some of those weighing him up would be experienced mercenary soldiers of Flanders, come for the only wo
rk that paid so well. Edward knew there would be spies among them, sending word back to Duke Charles. That did not concern him. His aims and desires were completely in accord with those of the man who had financed the expedition: to spite France and recover England. He felt a surge of excitement as he understood the men were also confident. They would not fail him. All he needed was to set foot on an English coast and plant his flag. They would surely give him that.
His brother Richard came on board with a lighter step, making the planking bounce. The spirits of both York men rose at the sight of ships tacking and manoeuvring out amongst the islands, testing the ballast and the cordage, already packed with men. Still more were heaving up anchors and spreading small sails ready to navigate the deep channels of Zeeland back to open sea.
‘Like an arrow from a bow, Brother,’ Richard said, making his voice carry. ‘Like a falcon from a great height, we’ll fall upon them.’ He was pleased to see his brother grin fiercely. Gone was Edward’s dull eye and great white belly. Four months of brutal training had made a hound of him again, restoring youth and vigour and speed. Edward moved lightly as the ship rocked in the swell. He reached out to draw Richard close, his smile widening as he spoke in a mutter the crew would not hear.
‘Will there be a fleet out there, ready for us, do you think?’ It was their great fear, that spies from home would have reported their preparations. If they sailed out into the Channel to find an English fleet waiting, the sun would set on their plans and their lives.
Richard clapped his brother on the shoulder, playing the part of two young men delighted by all they saw before them. At the same time, he spoke under his breath, leaning in.
‘They can’t expect us yet, Brother! It is not half a year since you left the coast of England, yet we are here, ready with ships and men. They cannot be ready for us. Nor can they know you have found your fighting spirit once again.’ He chuckled then. ‘And I never lost mine. I tell you, Edward …’