Jasper cleared his throat, shaking off the stillness that had held him.
‘To London, yes. Yes, boy! My ship is moored at Tenby and this little bark is far too frail for the open sea. I have horses though, waiting a mile up the river. Can you ride, son?’
‘Of course,’ Henry said curtly. He’d had the training of a knight, or at least as a squire to William Herbert. It was true he’d had more in the way of cuffs and scorn than proper instruction, but he could stay in a saddle. He could handle a sword.
‘Good. Once we are out of sight of the castle, we’ll mount up and ride to the coast. Then London, boy! To see your namesake, King Henry. To see Lancaster restored. By God, I’m still taking it in. We are out! To roam like free men, while they search the woods for us.’
The boat moved on the current, the oars employed with little noise. For a long time, the only sounds were from the water and the harsh breath of working men. Jasper shook his head at the continuing silence of the boy. He had expected a chattering jackdaw. Instead, he had rescued a little owl, watchful and still.
2
Warwick’s mouth tightened in worry. King Henry stood before the London crowd, looking across the city from the height of the Tower walls. There was a cold wind up there and Warwick repressed a wince at how frail the king had become. Henry of Lancaster had been broken, emptied by the years of his life. Though the king had been dressed that morning in fine embroidered cloth and a thick cloak, Warwick knew the poor fellow was just bones underneath. In fact, the cloak seemed to weigh the king down, so that he was more hunched and bowed than ever. Henry shivered constantly, his hands shaking as if he had an ague or an old man’s palsy. When the cloak fell back to his elbow, it revealed no swell of muscle but a forearm of uniform width, just twin flattish bones, sheathed in skin and veins.
Standing by Warwick and the king, Derry Brewer stared down at the heaving crowd. Like the king himself, the spymaster was not the man he had been. He walked with the aid of a stick and peered at the world from just one, gleaming eye. The scars that had replaced the other were hidden by a strip of boiled leather. In turn, that had rubbed away Brewer’s hair as it moulded itself to his scalp, so that it creaked and shifted against bare skin. Warwick shuddered to look at the pair of them and Brewer sensed it, turning his head and catching the edge of a younger man’s disgust.
‘We make a fine sight, don’t we, son?’ Brewer said softly. ‘Me with one eye ruined, one leg that don’t work and so many scars I feel like I’m wrapped in cloth, the way they pull. I don’t complain though, have you noticed? No, I’m like a rock, me, like St Peter. Perhaps I’ll change my name to remind people. Here stands Peter Brewer – and on this rock I will rebuild my kingdom.’
The king’s spymaster chuckled sourly to himself.
‘And King Harry Sextus here, still about as unmarked as a newborn lamb. No! I recall one. He took a wound up on the hill at St Albans, do you remember that, my lord?’
Warwick nodded slowly, knowing Brewer was prodding at him for old times.
‘You do?’ Derry said, his voice hardening. ‘You should, seeing as it was your order – and your archers that made the shot. You were the enemy then, Richard Neville, Earl of bleeding Warwick. I remember you.’ He shook his head in irritation, recalling a better year than the one he knew lay ahead, with every day begun in pain.
‘Beyond that scratch, I don’t believe King Henry has taken another scar, not in all the years I have known him. Is that not strange to think upon? A king wounded only once, but the arrow was yours – and it broke him, I’ll tell you now. He was cracked all over like an old jug, woken from his stupor, but weak and frail, barely able to stand in his armour. That arrow of yours was like dropping that jug on to a stone floor.’ To Warwick’s discomfort, the king’s spymaster touched his hand to his missing eye, scratching an itch or rubbing away a shine of tears, it was impossible to tell. Brewer went on in sudden anger, gesturing at the crowd.
‘Oh, these cheering people! They make such a bloody noise! Yet they are calling out to an empty man. I tell you, Richard, I would rather have all my scars and one good eye than lose my wits. Eh?’
Warwick nodded in response, wary of the man’s bright gaze.
‘Perhaps you and King Henry make one man between you,’ he said. ‘Your wits and his form.’
Derry Brewer blinked at him.
‘What’s that? You saying I’m not a man? That I’m less than a man?’
‘No … I meant it lightly, Master Brewer.’
‘Oh yes? I’m willing to give you a turn right now, if you think you’re more a man than me. I’ll knock you out, son. I have a few tricks yet.’
‘Of course you have,’ Warwick said. ‘I meant no insult.’ He could feel his cheeks growing warm and of course Derry Brewer noticed that as well.
‘Don’t be afraid, my lord, I wouldn’t hurt you. Not now you’re on the right side.’
Warwick frowned, then saw the spymaster had a wry expression that revealed his humour. Warwick shook his head.
‘Have a care, Master Brewer. This is a serious business.’
The king had made no movement as they’d talked. Henry stood like his own effigy in wax, resembling those sent to shrines in times of illness, or the mannequin of Caesar Mark Antony had once shown to a mob in Rome. When Warwick took the king’s hand, it was almost a surprise to find the flesh warm and pliant. He winced as swollen knuckles shifted in his grip, the veins like cords. Henry looked slowly round at the touch, his eyes showing no recognition. There was blankness there, and a trace of sadness. All else had gone.
Slowly, Warwick raised the king’s arm with his own, a gesture for all the eyes on them. The crowd roared and stamped below, but Warwick still heard King Henry gasp and felt him tug back, too weak to break the grip. It was pitiful, but Warwick could only maintain the hold, turning the king back and forth as he held his hand high.
‘It hurts!’ Henry muttered, his head drooping. Warwick lowered his arm as the man began to sag, sensing it could only get worse. Tower guards stepped past Derry Brewer then, taking the king’s weight. Warwick glanced at Henry’s hand as he let go. The nails were black with dirt and he shook his head.
‘Find gloves for His Majesty!’ he called after the guards. There were servants to tend the king at the Palace of Westminster. They would restore and bathe him. Perhaps the royal physicians might even bring a little life back to the man.
Derry Brewer’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
‘Poor old sod. I look at him now and I wonder if he even knows you’ve freed him. Or if he’s the right … foundation stone for this rebellion of yours, if you understand me.’
‘I understand you. It is not a matter of right and wrong, Master Brewer. He is the king.’
To his irritation, Brewer laughed out loud.
‘The guards have gone, my lord! Those below can’t hear us, up here on the wall. Perhaps they believe a king’s blood runs a deeper red than theirs, I don’t know. But you …’ Derry shook his head, smiling in wonder. ‘You saw Edward of York make himself a king. They say it was your suggestion that pricked him to it. And yet you deny him now. Perhaps you are the St Peter here, my lord, claiming you don’t know your master, over and over until the old cock crows.’
‘King Henry of Lancaster is the king of England, Master Brewer,’ Warwick said softly. For the first time in their conversation, Derry saw the man’s hand rest on the knife in his belt. He could not feel a true threat from the earl, just an awareness. Nonetheless, Derry shifted his weight and adjusted his grip on his cane. It was weighted in lead and he had surprised a couple of men with it in the years since Towton.
‘You can give him any name you like,’ Derry replied. ‘It will not mean anything. See that crowd below? All staring up at us in hope of one more glimpse? You want my advice?’
‘No,’ Warwick said. Derry nodded.
‘Good for you, son! My advice is to show the king in a few places. To let them see Henry alive and freed. The
n put something in his food that will take him out of the world, so that he sleeps but doesn’t wake up. No pain or blood, mind, not for a man who never had the wits to do harm except by his own weakness. Let him go quietly. His son will make a good king. By Christ, that boy is the grandson of the victor at Agincourt. He’ll make us all proud.’
Warwick narrowed his eyes, tilting his head as if he was seeing something he could hardly believe.
‘You think that is my intention!’ he said. ‘You can believe that of me? That I would murder the king? For some boy I hardly know?’ To Derry’s surprise, Warwick laughed suddenly, a harsh sound in the wind that blew at that height. ‘Edward of York said something like that to me once, when we went to visit Henry in his cell. He said he wished him forty years of good health, so that there could be no new young king over the water. He understood, Master Brewer. Just as I do now. You do not need to prod and poke at me with your suspicions. King Edward turned away from me and I have burned my boats with him. There is no return to that fold. I swear it on Mary, the Mother of God, on my oath and on the lives of my daughters. There now. I have raised an army to overwhelm him, like a cloak thrown over his head. Caesars fall, Master Brewer. That is what I have learned in my years.’
Derry’s one-eyed gaze had not wavered as Warwick spoke, judging and reading the man for the first hint of a lie or a weakness. What he saw eased some of the tension in his shoulders. He reached out slowly so as not to startle the earl, patting him on the arm.
‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘You know, you’ve done great harm, in your time. With your father and with York. No, let me speak. Just about the only thing you ever did well was fight against Jack Cade’s rebels. Remember that? That was a night that still wakes me sometimes in a sweat, I tell you true. Now you have a chance most men never get – to undo some part of all the hurt you caused. I just hope you take it by the throat when it comes. God knows there won’t be another.’ As Warwick stared, Derry Brewer turned away, limping after the king he had followed and protected his whole life. In that moment, Warwick understood that Brewer was the closest thing to a father King Henry had ever known.
Left alone, a glance over the wall reminded Warwick of the stakes. There were thousands of men and women filling the streets around the Tower of London, stretching further as those beyond came in as soon as they heard the news. King Henry had been freed. Lancaster was restored. There had been some fights and scuffles at the start, but those few willing to yell in anger for York had been battered silent, made to run or left to bleed. London was not a soft city, not a place to cross. Warwick knew that well. He needed the dockmen and fishermen, the bakers and smiths, the poachers and the knights and the archers. He needed the mercenary swordsmen he had been given by the king of France, despite the resentment they caused amongst the English. Despite the chests of silver it took to keep them loyal. He needed them all to keep his momentum, or his fate would be as if he fell from a galloping horse: dashed down and broken to pieces on the road north.
The south was Warwick’s heartland and always had been. Kent and Sussex of old, Essex and Middlesex too: the ancient kingdoms where Edward of York was still whispered to be a usurper and a traitor. Cornish and Devon men had come to join him as news spread, with entire villages setting out together to restore the rightful king. Warwick had made London a stronghold to give them time to walk or ride to him, knowing he would need every one to defeat King Edward in the field.
The mere thought of facing Edward brought fear – and jarring recollections of Towton to his mind: a Goliath in silver armour, fast and enraged and unstoppable. Yet so fragile as well, so prey to the whims of angels that he could be felled by a snagged foot, or by a single stone flying true. Warwick too had been at Towton. He had seen how easily good men could die and how little sense of right there was to it.
As he stared out over London, Warwick saw the wide south of England in his mind’s eye, narrowing with every mile north. He imagined it as the head of a spike he could hammer in, struck from France against the white cliffs, driving an iron point into Edward of York in all his arrogance and youth. It did not matter what had gone before, whatever Derry Brewer thought. Not one night’s candles could be unburned, not even if kings and bishops prayed for it. Warwick patted the old stones of the Tower with his gloved hand. If it came to survival, of Edward of York at his mercy, he would not hesitate. Brewer had seen that in him and it was true. Warwick had captured kings before. He saw them as mere men.
He thought perhaps there was not another in England who understood the world so well as he did then. If an earl could create a king, he could not love him too.
Warwick smiled to himself, turning away from the fevered tumult of the crowd below. In that sea of faces, in their yelling and their murmuring, it was easy to think of chickens in a coop, or perhaps the buzzing of hives. Yet they were men and women, once chosen to tend a garden, with foolishness and pride enough to steal the one fruit forbidden to their hand.
Warwick followed the guards down to the waiting coaches. As he did so, his smile twisted, growing bitter. Perhaps there were no kings, not without men to follow them. Men dreamed such things from dust – and then forgot that they were dreamers. They put foxes in with chickens and then just laughed and laughed as blood was shed.
As soon as his footmen saw him in the shadow of the Tower gatehouse, they stepped in smartly with lowered staves, pressing the crowd away to let the earl through to his horse. A dozen knights in full armour waited on horseback, watching for the first sign of violence in the heaving mob, ready to charge, glowering around them at anyone who strayed too close. King Edward was loved. God knew it and so did Warwick. For all his excesses and cruelties, that giant in his armour, still only twenty-eight, could turn a crowd to his side with one grand gesture or one call to battle. There would surely be some there who might give their lives for such a master. Warwick’s followers were twitchy and nervous, seeing threat in every drunken shout.
On a black gelding, a young man waited with them, blade-slim and hardened over the previous year. George, Duke of Clarence, leaned over his saddle pommel as he idled away the time, resting on his forearms and staring over the heads of the people, as far as he could see beyond. London was clotted with houses, guilds, inns, workshops and storehouses, all crammed in along a river that carried goods to lands most of them would never see. Lenses were ground there, clocks made, glass blown, stone carved, meat sliced and dried. It was a busy place, as a forgotten leg of pork can be busy in the hot sun, giving life to all those within it.
George of Clarence did not look pleased at whatever he saw, though Warwick could not discern whether it was the press of the commons or some internal thorn that pricked at him. Warwick forced a smile as his son-in-law glanced over and straightened.
‘They made me think of lions or bears with their roaring, when I was up on the wall,’ Warwick said. ‘I can hardly imagine what it must have been like down here.’
His daughter’s husband began to shrug, then reconsidered, remembering his manners.
‘They are loud enough, my lord, and brash, these Londoners. None too clean, either, some of them. I have been offered a dozen different kinds of food for coin and there are beggars and urchins and …’ He waved a hand, lacking the words to describe the variety all around them.
‘Be thankful they are cheering along with us,’ Warwick said. Like his guards, he did not enjoy the swell of the crowd, so like the movement of a tide that might snatch a man away into its depths, or rise in a great wave with no awareness for whoever was swept up into it.
‘I have seen them roused to rage and hatred, George, as when Lord Scales poured wildfire down upon their heads, not a dozen yards from where we stand today.’ Warwick shuddered at the memory of men and women on fire, their screams rising until their lungs drew only flame. Lord Scales had not survived that night. His gaolers had stood aside and let the mob into his cell.
‘Did you speak to the king, sir?’ George asked carefully. He was no
t used to the word, not for Henry of Lancaster. Warwick turned away from the festivities and clapped his son-in-law on the shoulder.
‘I did,’ he lied cheerfully. ‘He was mortally weak from his imprisonment, but I told him of your service to me and he agreed. When there is a new Lancaster seal to set to a bill, you will be made second heir to the throne, after his son, Edward of Lancaster.’
George of Clarence was twenty years old and had witnessed the death at sea of his firstborn only months before. He blamed his brother King Edward for that death, with a clean anger that suffused and filled him to the edges, so that it seemed at times that there was room for nothing else. He bowed his head at the news.
‘Thank you, sir. You have honoured our agreement.’
‘Of course,’ Warwick replied. ‘My daughter’s husband! I need you still, George! Not least for the men you can put in the field. You are the Duke of Clarence. Your brother – well, if he is no longer the king, he is still the Duke of York for now. I will not mistake his threat. Every day we lose here is one more for Edward to raise an army. And I would rather ride out with half the men and catch him unprepared than fight another Towton. God save us all from that.’
Warwick saw his son-in-law’s expression grow distant as the younger man imagined meeting his brother once more. There was a depth of hurt and rage there, all focused on the man who had called him a traitor and forced them to run. Warwick’s daughter Isabel had given birth in sea spray and lost her daughter to that cold. Warwick saw no forgiveness in George, Duke of Clarence, and for that he was thankful.
‘Be patient,’ Warwick said, his voice lower. George looked across at him, seeming to understand. Bringing the true and rightful king of Lancaster from his captivity was like a mummer’s scene performed for the crowd – a glowing brand to hold above the city and set alight the torches of the mob. Now it was done, they could race north and catch Edward, out of place and out of luck.
Queen Elizabeth of York gasped, pursing her mouth to a small moue and breathing hard, almost whistling as she rushed along the path close by Westminster Abbey. Her daughters scurried alongside, the three girls looking afraid and close to tears, taking their cue from their mother.