‘Are you alive?’ Edward asked, prodding him. A groan was his only answer, making him chuckle. ‘We’ve seen a light on the shore, over to the west, Richard. Did you hear? It can’t be a bonfire on a night like this. This gale and rain would snuff it out. And there’s only one light tower within a hundred miles of here – at Grimsby and the Humber. I think we’ve just passed Ravenspur, Richard. God willing the fleet will survive this blow to make our way back to it. What do you think?’
His brother was not asleep, but was instead so ill that he had withdrawn from the world, like a man knocked unconscious. With a great effort of will, he raised his head to his brother and told him he thought he should fuck off, which made Edward laugh.
The storm passed during the night, some time before the sun rose, though little was done until light returned. It was true the Mark Antony had been driven to the north, but the main mast was intact and the water level in the bilges was not dangerous, though it had reached a line marked on the boards that had not been touched in a generation. The captain himself had come down to have a look and Edward had gone with him, watching the man’s face closely and seeing little to please him.
The sea was rough still, showing whitecaps on the waves, turning to foam in the gusts. Yet they could raise sail and tack south against such a blow, heading back to the spit of land that made Grimsby one of the best-sheltered fishing ports in the world.
The crew were busy as the ship heeled over, heading back down the coast, checking every seam and joint, repairing and mending anything that had sprung loose in the storm. Railings had to be reseated and the carpenter and his lad were busy with damp shavings and saws, the noise oddly comforting.
By noon, Richard of Gloucester had lost some of his blue-green colouring and could be safely left to groan over the stern. The sailors grinned at the noise he made, though he saw no humour in it. He played no part in raising signals to the fleet, though the captain watched the first one or two approach with huge caution, ready to raise sail and race away if they attracted the wrong attention. There were ships on that sea who would snap up a vessel battered by a storm without a second thought. It was likely some of them had put to sea that morning in the hopes of sighting just such a vessel. Yet the fleet came back together, mostly from the north and east where they had been scattered. Edward took it upon himself to climb the mast to its highest point to count them, gaining himself a view and a memory he would never forget. Thirty-two of them came back to cluster around the Mark Antony. They took up station in close formation, spaced far enough apart to avoid collisions, then just waited as the day poured through their fingers and the sea began to rise once more.
The captain of the flagship waited as long as he dared, but it became obvious Edward would not cease his search for the missing ships. In the end, the man climbed his own mast and asked permission to take the rest in. In truth, they had been lucky to lose just four ships and around two hundred men and forty horses, taken to the bottom or snatched by armed force. Yet the sun was heading for the horizon once more as Edward gave up and agreed.
The captains of the fleet had been waiting only on their order. All the sail the ships could bear was sent up and they came in fast to the great opening of the Humber River, two miles across from one sandbank to another. For safety, they came in three abreast, each crew feeling the sudden drop in wind and the change in the rhythm of the waves that meant there was land between their vessel and the big ocean rollers once more. Those who had been ill felt themselves growing well again and there ahead, gold in the setting sun, was the spit of Ravenspur, an arm reaching around to shelter them all from the storms outside. A cluster of houses could be seen clinging to the outer edge, looking as if just one more storm would scour them all away.
Thirty-two ships anchored and began the work of sending boats in to shore and establishing a safe landing for horses and men. Some of them looked south to where there were docks and quays across the estuary, but Ravenspur was where a king had landed and Edward only laughed and shook his head when his brother pointed wordlessly at Grimsby on the other side. It was one of the finest fishing villages in the north, just about. But no one began a revolution from Grimsby, that was just the truth of it.
Before the dark had truly settled on the spit of land, Edward came ashore with his brother and his lords. Earl Rivers and Baron Say took station as his guards and representatives. Another two hundred or so of those who had disembarked gathered around. It was not a coincidence that those few who had been born in England and Wales had also been the first to set foot on the shore they had once called home. They had been the first to volunteer as well, when Charles le Téméraire asked for men. Many of them had not set foot in England since boyhood, or whatever crime had made them run for the sea when they were young and foolish. Their delighted grins touched Edward’s mood and he smiled back at them. The rest would land the following day rather than risk drowning in the muddy shallows. As Edward looked around him, he felt the joy of it, so that his eyes shone.
‘Bring me my banners,’ Edward called. His brother was there to hand them to him, on poles of polished oak that stood eight or ten feet high. Edward took them reverently in his arms, resting them on his shoulder as he trudged away through the men. His brother followed with torches and the crowd came with them both, swirling around them as they stood in awe at what was happening.
A hundred yards or so from the shore, Edward found rising ground and stalked up it, with the sun setting on his right hand. At the highest point, he planted the spikes of the banner poles with great lunges, pressing them deep into the ground. He knew better than most how the men would take the omen if one of them fell, so he used all his strength to shove them into the clay. The white rose, for his father. The Sun in Flames for himself. The three lions for the crown of England. He knelt then in silence and when he rose again and crossed himself, it was dark – and he was home.
11
It took another day to land the rest of Edward’s forces from the battered little fleet. Some of the captains found sandy places where their boats could get all the way in, while others had to clamber through grasses and thick mud. Despite the care they took, a few men still drowned in armour, dragged beneath mud or salt water before anyone could get a rope to them or drag them out. It was hard work and they were panting and weary by the time the sun rose to noon.
As well as the Mark Antony, six of the ships had brought horses over in stalls that could be knocked down in moments. Two were designed for the task, with Venetian slings and cranes to lower the animals into the water, where they could swim to shore with the boys tending them. The other four were just merchant cogs with deep holds, crudely adapted for the task. They were driven on to the beach as fast as they could go, coming to a halt with a great groan of cracking timbers, then leaning over with horses whinnying in terror inside, the noise carrying far in the cold morning. Those ships would not sail again – and their crews treated them as hulks, already dead. Teams of them battered out the planking and joists with hammers, breaking wide holes. They led the miserable horses out to stand together, pawing at the scrub soil and looking sickly after the storm. A number of them had died in the chaos and crashing of the great waves, either overwhelmed by sickness or killed by the same hammers when they broke down their stalls and threatened the ship itself. Those shiny black bodies were left in the bilge-water as daylight shone below for the first time.
Perhaps because the storm had passed, the March day seemed to have a touch of spring in it, though it was a grimy and bedraggled army that assembled on the flats. Boats continued back and forth from the ships waiting at anchor, bringing weapons and tools and pieces of armour found scattered over the decks after the storm. The men could taste salt in everything as it clung to their skin and clothes in a fine powder. They drank deeply from flasks and broached barrels of drinking water as they were floated ashore, but it was not enough to sate their thirst and no one had eaten beyond a meagre ration of dried fish and meat for two days.
Edwa
rd looked at the men who would win his kingdom back for him. They stood as if they had been defeated already, worn out and starving, like so many beggars. His brother looked keen enough and Lord Rivers too, with Baron Say standing alongside. Those men would follow him to the end, he was certain. The rest would see their own poor state as they looked around. They would begin to doubt and to be afraid.
‘Lord Rivers,’ he called. ‘Take my banners from the hilltop and pass them out to three of your men. Let us begin with pride. The city of Hull is no more than a dozen miles away. We’ll find rest and food there. Beyond that is York. We will gather more men to my colours in that place. This is just the first step, gentlemen! Captains – have your men form in column.’ His orders were echoed by the twenty men with authority over the grumbling soldiers, bullying them into lines and formations, all the while snapping commands to the boys running alongside with horns and pipes and drums. The rhythms of the march began to sound across the salt flats and those who had heard them before felt their sluggish blood respond in the cold, raising their heads to scent the wind. They turned their backs to the sea and headed inland, leaving the fleet to its repairs and its return to Flanders. The sea-captains knew they would not be needed again. Edward would not run a second time, no matter what he faced.
Warwick had not disbanded his army over the winter months, though keeping twenty thousand men away from their work for an entire winter had reduced him almost to beggary. The heart of it was the chaos around his titles. There simply was no mechanism in law to bring an attainted man back into society. Denied his rents, Warwick had been reduced to selling small estates. There was no help for it. The army had to be paid – and fed and clothed and given weapons. Those men needed another host of trades to keep them in the field, from smiths and leatherworkers to cobblers, spinners, tailors, doctors, too many to recount. All of it meant that a torrent of silver and gold had to be found, even when Warwick paid as late as he could and was always a month or two behind. He seemed to spend entire days cloistered with clerks and sheaves of accounts until his head ached and he could hardly see.
Though he had not yet won the formal right to his estates in Warwickshire, it still felt like coming home. Coventry was his English heartland, the great city to the north of the county. It was not as rich as London, though he had still taken loans from all the monastic houses there, at whatever terms they imposed. One way or the other, he would have it all back – or if he died, he would not care about the debts. It was an odd freedom to feel, for a man without sons. His daughters would be protected by the Duke of Clarence or the Prince of Wales. One way or the other, his fortune was his to recover – and to spend as he saw fit.
The last of the religious men left with his ledgers, bowed over by responsibility and age. Warwick was alone for the first time in six days and he felt his senses swim. Ever since the sighting of a fleet had come in, he had been working and planning a thousand details. All for the threat of one man.
The door opened at the end of the hall. Warwick looked up at the interruption and found himself smiling in welcome at the sight of Derry Brewer. It was not a friendship he had ever expected and in fact they had been on opposing sides more than once. His brother John Neville had no liking for the man at all, though he’d formed a grudging respect for Brewer’s loyalty. Yet if Richard Neville could forgive the queen who had killed his father, he could surely forgive her servants as well. Warwick felt a little smug about it, as if he had attained a sort of wise spirit that other men would never know.
‘I thought you were heading back to London, Master Brewer,’ he said as Derry approached, tapping along on his stick. It was strange, but for all Warwick’s newfound warmth, he still became aware of the dagger he wore on his hip. He felt a twinge of weary cynicism, but kept a hand close to its hilt even so. The world had proven itself to be a hard place, of betrayals and brutal killings. He would not be one caught by surprise, not ever again.
‘I am, this afternoon,’ Derry replied. ‘I thought as I was gathering in my little bees, that I would take a moment to visit you.’
‘Your “bees”, Derry? The whispers of men and women you employ, I suppose?’
‘I like the image, Richard. Of my people settling here and there, all unnoticed as they listen. Or perhaps it is just that the news they bring in is honey to me.’
‘You have heard something?’ Warwick said, straightening.
‘As you said, London is too far from the north of England to be of use to us. The news is always out of date. Coventry though – these middle lands – is a beating heart. And it has a couple of miles of good, thick city wall, which I have learned to value over the years. I do like it. Perhaps I will take a house here in my retirement. If I had a patron willing to lease a property to me, perhaps, at a fair rate.’
Warwick scratched the lobe of his ear.
‘I imagine a man with useful information can make all sorts of arrangements, Master Brewer. It depends on what he has heard.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it does,’ Derry replied, giving up. In truth, he had a small house in the Rookeries of London and a manor house outside, in the name of an old friend and archer. He had spent barely a month there in the previous decade, but he still dreamed of tending his true hives and pruning apple trees when Henry’s son sat safe and secure on the throne and York was just a black mark in the scrolls. He smiled at Warwick, the one eye seeing the younger man’s exhaustion and understanding it only too well. Neither of them would survive if Edward was allowed to win, that was an absolute certainty.
‘I did hear that Edward and his brother set out from Flanders with more than a thousand men. I have a reliable lad there who said they are mercenaries of Burgundy, though we could have guessed at all that. Still, the boy deserves a patron and I said you’d find him a place in the ranks.’
Warwick waved a hand.
‘What’s one more on my payrolls? I have thousands of men sleeping in the market place here, have you seen them? There are many more marching up and down in Warwick Castle. Each morning, I am visited by the fine mayor and the aldermen of Coventry holding their hats in their hands and asking if I would mind very much stopping my army from stealing food and bothering their young women. I had to hang a fine great bully for killing a local, can you believe that? For doing what I need him for, I had to take his life! I find myself become a nurse to them all – or a tutor, or a … man of accounts! All while I wait and every day that passes is a turn of the thumbscrew, tighter and tighter …’
‘Calm yourself, Richard,’ Derry said. ‘We sighted a fleet, that’s all. Yes, this is the worst time, the waiting. Won’t we look fools if that great storm broke his ships to pieces? Think of that! Or if he lands up by York, think of all we’ve done to remind them of Towton in recent months. Lancaster on the throne means peace, son! Peace means trade. Trade means wealth. That’s our line, when they ask. Polite and firm – tell them what they want to hear. The cities of the north don’t want Edward’s wars. They still remember the last one.’ Derry was pleased to see Warwick was at least listening to him.
‘When they land, my little bees will send word just as fast as they can and then we’ll fall on him from a great height. You have Earl Oxford on your side, Duke Exeter, Earl Essex and Devon, Somerset down on the coast, waiting for Margaret to cross. You have your brother John – and I would imagine you have your own trusted men in the north with pigeons, for the moment they catch sight of our big lad?’ Derry paused until Warwick nodded. The pigeons had been taken up to York months before, ready to wing their way back to London. He bit his lip and muttered a curse at that thought. The birds would pass straight over Coventry, heading for the mews in Westminster where they had been raised. It was just one more of a thousand things to consider and plan around.
Derry Brewer was rambling on as if oblivious, though Warwick knew from experience that the man rarely missed any reaction to his words, even with his one eye. In that single aspect, Derry reminded him of the French king, another man who watc
hed rather more closely than was good manners.
‘And Edward has his brother Richard and Lord Rivers, loyal as an old dog. Baron Say went with him and is likely still at his side, tasting the crumbs that fall from his great champing jaws.’ Derry grinned at the image, then grew more serious. ‘There are men I do not trust in these times, Richard – Earl Percy in the north, for one. You knew him when he was a lad, so I might discount him. But then your brother John keeps telling anyone who asks that he will have that title returned to his hot little hands. So Percy could well come in with the Yorks, whereas if your brother could just keep his trap shut, he might stay out of it completely.’
‘I’ll have a word with John,’ Warwick said. Brewer shrugged.
‘It’s too late for that now! The whole country knows your brother has a claim, or thinks he does. What about Clarence? Can you trust him?’
Warwick considered his son-in-law for a moment, then nodded.
‘Yes. I was there when his daughter was born and died at sea. He has not forgiven his brother, not yet.’
‘He seems to expect a great deal for one who has chosen his wife and his vengeance though. Heir to the throne? Has he learned yet of your daughter’s marriage to Edward of Lancaster? Does that not put Clarence further away from the throne? What will “second in line” matter then?’
Warwick snorted.
‘He wants the Duchy of York above all – and Edward will claim that over any other right. No, I will trust my son-in-law for his ambition, even if he cools on the rest.’
‘You forgave Margaret of Anjou,’ Derry reminded him, prodding at old wounds. Warwick shot him a sharp glance.
‘I did, because it was my way back to my own titles. I have had enough of being in the wrong.’
‘I see that. But I just meant Clarence might come to feel the same way. I would not trust him on the field if the day can be turned against me, if you understand? Him and Edward and Richard – those three shared the loss of a father. You should be wary of those sons of York, that’s all. Just think of your own brothers, even John with his petty anger and his sense of the world against him. He’s still yours, if the knives come out.’