Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors

  The queen’s pregnancy was so far advanced that she had to support her swollen womb with a hand and roll her gait, more like a drunken sailor than the wife of King Edward. Her breath was harsh and cold in her throat, but she still used part of it to curse her husband at intervals. The child kicking in her womb would be her sixth. She knew how perilously close she was to giving birth and she puffed as she lurched along, feeling again the differences that told her it would be a boy. Her daughters had all grown in perfect serenity, but when she bore sons, Elizabeth vomited so hard each morning that she had tiny starbursts of blood in her eyes and mottling along her cheeks. She dared to hope for a prince and an heir.

  Her mother, Jacquetta, looked back every time she overheard Elizabeth hiss an angry word, tutting and frowning at her in reproof. Thin-haired and pale at fifty-five, she had outlived two husbands and borne fourteen children, but in the process lost neither the manners nor the accent of her childhood in the duchy of Luxembourg. Elizabeth rolled her eyes in exasperation, biting her tongue.

  ‘We are nearly there, my pigeon,’ her mother said. ‘Just another hundred yards, no more. We will be safe, then, until your husband comes for us.’

  Elizabeth had no breath to reply. She looked ahead to the squat building of grey stone built in the grounds of the Abbey. Sanctuary. It frightened her, looking like a fortress or even a prison, despite the ivy that covered the walls. She had hardly noticed its existence before, but it had suddenly become her only chance for safety.

  She had kept her wits as Warwick arrived in the capital with an army of brigands and foreign soldiers. Without fuss or fanfare, Elizabeth had summoned her barge and brought her children and her mother to the river’s edge, taking to the water to be rowed upstream, just as Warwick entered the Tower to free King Henry. It made her heart thump painfully to think of how close it had been – and what a prize Warwick would have made of her. Yet she had not panicked and, as a result, she had reached the only place they dared not come.

  The little fortress had not been built to give hope, but only the barest comfort in the direst need. Yet the protection of the Church was what Elizabeth desperately required, with a child so close to being born and her fool of a husband out of place and unable to defend her. Elizabeth hissed a longer breath at that thought, pausing to rest her hands on her knees and just gasp, feeling the heat build in her face. A drop of sweat ran along her jaw and darkened the stone of the path. She could only stare at it.

  ‘We are almost there now,’ her mother cooed to her. ‘Just a little further, ma cocotte, my little hen. See, there is a young brother waiting at the door. Come, dear. For your father’s memory.’

  The monk’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of the queen, her mother and three young princesses in little dresses, all panting as if they had run a mile. His gaze drifted over the great bulge of Elizabeth’s womb and he blushed and looked at his feet, radiating warmth.

  ‘I claim sanctuary,’ Elizabeth said formally, between breaths, ‘for myself, my mother and my daughters. Grant us entrance.’

  ‘My lady, I must summon my master, from where he prays in the Abbey. Please remain here while I run to him.’

  ‘Non!’ Elizabeth’s mother said forcefully, poking him in the chest. ‘You are the brother of the door. Write our names in your book, allow us to enter! After that you may fetch whomsoever you desire. Now, monsieur!’

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, feeling dizzy and relieved that she could let her mother’s temper handle the details. She leaned against the doorpost as the young monk stammered and acquiesced, bringing out a large leather tome with ink and a quill. Handing them to Jacquetta, he scurried back in for a desk.

  Elizabeth looked up, her senses sharpening at a shout from the river. It could have been a boatman hailing the shore. Or it could have been pursuers, tracking her from her rooms that morning. Perhaps they had not expected a queen of England to move so quickly, without servants or bags. She was ahead of them and so close to safety she thought she might weep or faint.

  ‘Mother, they come,’ she said. Her mother dropped the book to the ground and half tore pages as she flicked through the vellum sheets, the record of centuries. When she found a blank page, the old woman dipped a quill and scattered droplets of black in her haste as she scrawled the names and titles of their small party of five. As she wrote, the monk came out with a writing desk on a pedestal, struggling under the weight of cast iron and oak. He stared nonplussed at the small woman sitting like a child on the grass to write, then put the table down and accepted the book from her.

  Elizabeth heard another shout and looked up to see a group of running men, all in mail and bearing swords on their hips.

  ‘Sanctuary has been granted now, yes?’ she demanded of the monk without taking her eyes off the approaching men.

  ‘As long as you remain on consecrated ground, my lady, yes, from now until the end of time. No man may enter here, from this moment.’ He spoke the last in full awareness that his voice could be heard by the group who had slowed and fanned out around them. Elizabeth ushered her daughters and mother inside the open door before she looked back from the gloomy interior. The young monk showed surprising courage, she thought, as he continued to speak. His faith made him brave, perhaps.

  ‘Any man who breaches holy sanctuary will be made criminal and excommunicated from the Church, never to take the Sacred Host, or marry, or be buried in a churchyard, but instead to suffer alive and in hell for all eternity, damned in this world and set afire in the next.’

  The threats were all for the men who glared through the doorway at Elizabeth. When she was certain they would not dare to follow, only then, she turned and left, vanishing into the gloom. The pangs of birth began before she had gone a dozen yards and she had to stifle a cry before they heard.

  ‘I will not forgive Edward for this,’ Elizabeth hissed as her mother took her arm and tried to support some part of her weight. ‘Where is he, the cursed fool?’

  ‘Shh, my hen. Your husband will be doing all he can against these armies, you know it. Such a fine man! You are safe now; that is what matters.’

  Her mother had been resting a palm on the bulge of Elizabeth’s womb as they walked deeper into the fortress of Sanctuary. With a gasp, she pulled it back as if she had been stung.

  ‘Is the child … ?’

  ‘Coming? Yes, I think so. It was the running, wrenching at him.’

  To Elizabeth’s surprise, her mother chuckled.

  ‘Your big husband deserves a son. I pray it is a boy. Now, I will send that monk for the Abbot. We will need a midwife and a private room for the child to be born.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ Elizabeth said, her voice breaking.

  ‘Why? Have I not had fourteen children born alive? I know as much as any midwife, my pigeon.’

  ‘It is the strangeness of this place. It is so cold and dark.’

  They had reached a door and Jacquetta guided her daughter through it, not caring what they would find as long as there was more light than in the corridor. The noise of Elizabeth’s daughters grew as they entered a wood-walled study, comfortable and smelling of polish, tallow and sweat.

  ‘This will do, I think,’ Jacquetta said. ‘And this place is not so strange. Remember it is consecrated ground, my love. To be born in Sanctuary must be a very great blessing.’ Elizabeth gasped as another tightening came, giving herself over to her mother’s care.

  3

  With bustling market crowds on either side, Jasper Tudor jumped down from his horse and walked away without looking back. A red-faced butcher shouted that he couldn’t just leave his horse in the middle of the bloody road, but was ignored.

  ‘Follow me, lad,’ Jasper called over his shoulder. ‘Quick now.’ Henry tossed his reins to the butcher, seeing the man’s small eyes swim with confusion and bad temper.

  ‘Oy! You can’t … Hey!’ Henry dismounted quickly, determined not to lose his uncle in the crowds. Jasper was already getting ahead, his long-limbe
d stride and grim expression parting the early-morning traders of Tenby. They were everywhere as the sun rose, carrying trays of hot bread or baskets of fish brought in from the first catch of the day. They seemed to sense Jasper would go through or over them if they didn’t move sharply.

  Henry heard new shouts behind him, different to the traders’ cries, rising in excitement as if hunters had him in sight. He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, making himself small. He had assumed they were safe in the crowds. Cobbles were no help to trackers, after all. He felt his stomach twist in fear when he looked back and saw the bobbing heads of men in mail with swords drawn. Cries of outrage and a clatter of falling stalls seemed close on his heels. Henry imagined he could feel the first hand clapping him on the shoulder and bringing him to a halt.

  There was still a very good chance they would both be killed, he forced himself to admit, just as he had begun to feel they would escape. With his life in peril, there was no room for wishes and fantasies. He could not allow that form of weakness, that had poor men dreaming of justice even as they walked up the steps to the scaffold, even as the rope rasped against their necks. He would not be such a fool. Those chasing them were brutal, remorseless men. He knew they would rather go back to the earl with a broken body than empty-handed, a thousand times over.

  Panting, Henry pressed on. His uncle Jasper had no protection in the law for his past estate. As a common man, Jasper could be arrested and put to torture by any king’s officer. It was true a judge and jury would eventually be called to hear his accusers, but with Earl Herbert to speak against him, there was only one possible outcome.

  It was far more likely that his uncle would be cut down in the pursuit or take an iron bolt in the back. Henry jogged along after the man, a stranger in all but their shared name, weighing the odds of being killed as his companion. There would be chances he could take, he thought, before the end came. There would surely be a moment when he could just step aside and melt into the crowd, or even to surrender to one of the guards, who would know him by sight. To his surprise, Henry found himself struck by discomfort at the thought. Yet he would not choose death for a man he barely knew, not if there was a chance to live and plan again.

  Henry kept his eyes on his uncle as they wove through the crowd, passing close enough to an apprentice carrying a pig carcass to make the man stagger. As the butcher’s boy turned to shake his fist, Henry slipped around his back, amusing himself by slapping the pig loudly on its haunch. The apprentice began to turn the other way in rising indignation, but Henry was past, barely in time to see his uncle vanish into the gloom of an apothecary shop.

  Henry hesitated as he reached the door, looking back along the busy street. The guards were still there, not far behind. They seemed determined to continue the chase and he thought he could hear them shouting. He felt as if he could lead them a merry dance all day, but he had no special desire to be run to exhaustion. The harbour was a few hundred yards away, behind the cliffs and the row of shops at their foot. The apothecary was surely just a rathole, with no way out. The guards would find them. Henry took a deep breath, calming himself. Perhaps it was time to surrender to Earl Herbert’s men. He’d take a beating, but he’d survived those before.

  His thoughts were interrupted as a wiry arm reached out from the shop door and snagged his collar, yanking him in. Henry grunted, his hand dropping to his belt dagger until he felt fingers tighten over his and he looked up at his uncle.

  ‘Can’t have you standing out there like a signpost, can we, lad?’ Jasper said. He was panting and flushed, but he smiled on one side of his mouth and his eyes were bright with amusement. ‘Come on.’

  With his uncle’s hand on his arm, Henry stumbled across the wooden floor of the shop, between rows of glass jars and vials on either side. The shelves were so crammed with goods that there was barely an aisle and his uncle had to turn and sidestep to reach the counter. The place smelled strongly of vinegar and something else at least as bitter. Henry held his nose in his fist as a sneeze built, still half trying to listen for their pursuers. He looked up when his uncle spoke to the owner.

  ‘Master Ambrose? I give you good day and God’s blessings. Do you remember me? Do you know my name?’

  ‘I believe I do, my lord,’ the apothecary replied, not looking particularly happy about it. The little man was completely bald, his scalp a pale and freckled white from all the years spent in the sunless shop. He looked a little like one of the strange fish peering out of the glass-stoppered jugs on the high shelves. When he smiled, Henry saw he had very short teeth, worn to nubs that barely cleared the gums.

  ‘This is my nephew, Ambrose, not much older than I was when I was last in this shop of yours.’

  Henry and the old man exchanged wary glances. The action was enough to bring the apothecary’s courage to the surface.

  ‘The … new earl is said to be a vengeful young pup, my lord,’ the old man said, sucking at something in his mouth so that his entire face twisted. ‘If I am accused of sheltering an outlaw, my life, my shop, everything I own will be forfeit. I am sorry, my lord. I knew your father well and I know he would want me to do right by his boy, but …’

  Jasper lost patience with the slow speech.

  ‘Master Ambrose, I ask no favour of you – except that you turn the other way as we use your entrance to the tunnels.’

  The pale brow wrinkled in consternation.

  ‘That old door has been boarded up nigh twenty year,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his face where sweat had begun to shine.

  ‘Even so. There are men following me, Master Ambrose. They will have the harbour roads well guarded. This is my way past them all. I have a ship waiting. You will not hear from me again, unless it is to reward you for your sealed lips. Now, please. Step out of my way.’

  The old man shuffled to one side and bowed slightly as Jasper flipped up the hinged countertop and rushed through with Henry a step behind.

  ‘Tend your shop, Master Ambrose. I was not here.’

  Jasper pushed through rows of sacks and wooden crates ready to be opened. He snatched up a bit of strap iron used as a lever, spinning it in his hand as he walked.

  The shop went back a surprising distance. Above, the plastered ceiling became rough stone as if it had been made by burrowing into the cliffs. Henry nodded to himself as he went. He’d heard tell of smugglers using tunnels in Tenby. The old man had certainly not been surprised by the demand.

  Jasper reached a wall of old boards blocking their way. Both he and his nephew looked up and froze as they heard loud voices back in the shop, rising into a question.

  They were out of time. Jasper jammed the strap iron into a crack and heaved, breaking the boards away from their nails. He pulled the gap open with his free hand and the wood fell into pieces, releasing a cloud of dust and a breath of cool air tinged with green damp.

  The tunnel beyond led into blackness, covered in mould and slippery to the touch. Jasper didn’t hesitate, plunging into the dark. Henry had time to hear someone call ‘There! At the back!’ before he was off, breathing so fast he found he was making himself dizzy. It was not time to give up yet, not with an escape beckoning before him.

  His uncle raced in, straight and blind for a hundred yards, two, three, as if he knew for certain that there would be no sudden turn or block to knock them cold. Henry had enough of a task just keeping him in sight, though his terror of being left behind gave wings to his feet. It was still hard to keep up. Jasper Tudor was running for his life and he would not be caught for lack of trying.

  When the first turn came at last, it was upon them so suddenly that Jasper crashed sideways into rough stone, driving the air out of him with a cry of pain. Henry heard him hiss instructions to himself, then they were off again, into a dark so complete that he could not see his own outstretched hands dipping and swinging in front of him.

  Jasper slowed as he counted, his fingers trailing along the wall until they found a gap. The sounds of their pursu
ers had dwindled and as they turned right once more, the silence of the deep earth seemed to swell upon them. Henry found himself relaxing without distractions. It was a cool, peaceful place that smelled of stone and clay – a place of no life, of no sound, perhaps a place of death, but calm even so. He smiled in the privacy of blackness, realizing he was enjoying himself. His uncle was heaving for each breath by then, but he kept moving, still muttering numbers until Henry became aware of the faintest lines of grey piercing the blackness. There was a light ahead, growing as Jasper broke into a run once again. A tiny door lay before them, its planking cracked and grown all about by ferns and brambles. There was a bar across and Jasper shoved it up and wrenched the door open without hesitating.

  The sunlight blinded them both. If there had been armed men waiting for them at that moment, they would have been taken as easily as children. Yet there was no one and Henry gaped at the sight of a shingle beach. The door had been placed at the back of a cleft deep in the harbour cliffs, hidden from any passing eye. Out on the deep water, half a dozen ships rocked at anchor. Gulls called overhead as Henry and his uncle crept to the outer edge and peered along the docks.

  There were guards there: four, in the livery of the Herbert family. They were alert enough and bore weapons, but they were facing into the town along the road. Henry felt Jasper’s gaze and looked up into his uncle’s eyes, seeing amusement and relief.

  ‘You see the boat there?’ Jasper said. ‘With the stag pennant? That’s mine. She’ll take us to that glorious ship waiting for us, the one with the low waist. Understand?’ He waited until his nephew nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now, lad, you might have seen two of those guards have crossbows. It isn’t enough to just run for it, or they’ll walk over and put a bolt in our backs as the oarsmen get going. We’ll have to take it slowly, to stroll, maybe one at a time. All right?’