‘Just go, lad. Now.
Run
, or by God I’ll kill you myself.’ With an effort, he shoved Henry out into the sunlight and they were off. It did Jasper’s temper no good to see how quickly the boy opened a gap between them, going like a hare heading for gorse. Jasper dared not look back at the guards along the quayside. One glance at the noise of running steps was all it would take. There. A shout behind him.
‘Cast off!’ he shouted ahead to his men. He saw the first mate sawing through a tarred rope holding them to an iron stanchion, the boat almost pitching over as the small crew of six men raced to set the oars. The ship’s cutter was narrow in the beam, built for speed.
Ten paces ahead, Jasper saw Henry leap, clearing his own body length in the air before waiting hands caught him in a great tangle. He’d been lucky not to smash straight through the ribs of the boat and sink them all, Jasper thought, his mind working in fear and manic exhilaration. His breath was rasping and his legs were clumsy and slow. He could sense the clatter of boots on stone at his back and he expected a bolt at any moment. When he reached the dock edge, Jasper followed his nephew’s example, throwing himself headlong at the boat. He could not swim and it seemed an age in the air.
The rail struck Jasper a cruel blow under the ribs. His legs trailed in choppy cold water as his men cheered and pulled at him. They could not row with his weight hanging over the side. Jasper rolled in against the inner planking, panting and laughing in reaction as he looked up at white clouds scudding overhead.
‘Row! And keep your heads down!’ he shouted. As he did, he heard the dull clack of crossbows and one of the French rowers gave a sharp cry, clutching at his chest. That oar fell out of time and fouled the next. Jasper felt the boat turn and swore, knowing that they would present a perfect target to the soldiers on the quayside as the bows swung round.
He heaved himself up as his nephew grabbed the dying man and put him over the side, taking the loose oar. Henry settled himself with quick, neat movements and an expression of utter calm, dipping the oar with the others.
The sailor behind shouted in shock and fury, though Jasper noted the man did not stop rowing. They had been friends, clearly. The French sailor seemed caught between outrage and weeping as he heaved with the others, all the while cursing Henry Tudor.
The boat’s swinging prow lurched back round and Jasper saw a bolt streak into the water in a bright trail of bubbles, missing them completely. The rowers knew very well the agony and fevers that would await them if they were hit. They bent their wooden oars in huge sweeps, their faces swollen purple as they surged away from the docks.
Jasper Tudor lay wearily back once more, propped on an elbow and a thwart, craning his neck to look ahead to his ship, as she grew before them.
Pembroke
had been named in his honour. Crewed and paid for by the king of France as she was, he had grown fond of her. She was ninety feet and six inches prow to stern, twenty and four in the beam, with a great triangle sail and rowing benches for when there was no wind. The Flemish-built galley was both sleek and fast and he knew nothing on the Welsh coast could catch them.
‘Isn’t she fine?’ Jasper said to Henry, still leaning into his rowing. A part of the older Tudor remained aware of the sullen rage in the sailor staring at Henry’s back. He had not
come so far and risked so much to lose his nephew to a feud or a stabbing. With a sigh, Jasper fingered a knife in his pocket, a sharp little thing barely longer than his thumb.
In his position at an oar, Henry Tudor was able to look back at the coast as it dwindled away. The young earl’s guards were tiny, lonely figures on the docks, still staring and perhaps considering their own futures now that the Tudors had gone.
As Jasper watched, Henry smiled to himself, taking a huge breath to fill his narrow chest. The lad was tiring visibly, but his uncle sensed he wanted to finish the task and he did not interrupt it. As they drew close to
Pembroke
’s hull, the rowers shipped oars together and grappled ropes sent flying down to them. The boat was lashed on, as steady as it would ever be. Jasper beckoned to his nephew and saw the sailor rising behind at the same moment, his face ugly with passion. As the Frenchman reached out, Jasper knocked him off balance with his shoulder, just as the man had intended for the lad. The sailor flailed and went into the sea with a great splash.
‘The rest of you go aboard,’ Jasper growled. ‘And look after this boy, my nephew, who has the blood of kings in him. Keep him safe or I’ll see you swing.’
They climbed with ease, barefoot and strong. He noted how they took care to show Henry where to place his hands on the coarse ropes, though the bristles stung his softer skin. Jasper looked over the side and was surprised to see the French sailor there, just paddling away without panic. Not many of his men could swim, but those who had grown up on the coasts sometimes learned to float and dive when they were very young.
There was no longer any anger on the sailor’s face. He knew very well who had pushed him in and his temper had been cooled by the sea.
‘Milord, I am sorry. I stumbled and I will not trouble you again.’
Jasper realized the man thought he was at fault, as one who had knocked against the captain of the ship, of all people. Not that it mattered what the man thought. For an instant, Jasper considered letting him strike out for the shore, but the earl’s guards were still there. The sailor knew their home port, their strengths and supporters. Jasper Tudor put out an arm to help the man climb back into the boat. As the fellow took hold, Jasper reached down with his little knife, catching him in a long slice under his chin. The water bloomed red around him and the sailor fell back and under with an expression of astonishment and betrayal.
Jasper turned away as quickly as he could, tying the blade cord on to his belt once more. He went fast up the ropes, skinning his knuckles on the rough planks but feeling the pleasure of a sea breeze and success. He had gone to rescue his only living blood relative. All the men of Pembroke, all the earl’s servants and guards and hunters and soldiers had not been able to stop him. He felt the weight of the French king’s gold at his back and patted it. It seemed a shame to just meekly hand it over once again, with London still ahead. A man could make his fortune in London, with a good stake to get him started.
‘Raise sail and bear east for Bristol. I command this vessel in the name of King Henry Sextus of England, House of Lancaster.’ There were English and Welsh among the crew. They cheered his words. The Bretons and Flemish sailors just shrugged and got on with raising the anchor from where it dragged over the seabed far below.
Dressed in black, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, settled himself on the top step of the stairs to the inn landing, his chin held in his palm, above a propped elbow. The hose he wore contained a padded section over each buttock. It had been made for hard riding, but it also served to keep his backside clear of splinters. The doublet jacket was comfortable enough, cut deceptively wide to allow a swordsman to move freely. At intervals, he worked his jaw against the high collar, rubbing the dark-blond bristles against the linen weave. He would have to shave again soon, though the experience left his skin raw as a plucked goose.
His back was hurting. He shifted uncomfortably to ease it, from right to left, increasingly bored and irritated. On a normal evening, he imagined the tavern talk and laughter would have drowned the squeals and rhythmic thumping coming from the rooms above. Yet with King Edward’s guards glowering at anyone who moved or spoke, most of the regular drinkers had slipped away. The bloody-minded few who remained were determined not to notice anything. They emptied tankards of ale at a steady rate, keeping their gaze on the rush-covered floor.
The noises above built to an extraordinary crescendo, every note as clear through the thin walls as if they stood in the bedroom with the king. The tavern girls had not been particularly striking, Richard recalled, despite the rumour that had brought the royal hunt to their door. Still, they showed enthusiasm enough when they saw who would take
them upstairs. Edward was known to be generous, if he liked a whore and felt he was liked in return. The results were to be heard. Richard wondered if his brother was strangling one of them, by the noise she made. Part of him wished he would, just to keep her from screaming like a vixen in heat.
It was an unworthy thought and Richard sighed to himself. His brother brought out the worst in him sometimes, though the big clod could change his mood with just a smile or a word. Both men and women went in awe of his brother. When Richard stood close by Edward’s side, eclipsed and forgotten, he was free to observe their wide eyes and trembling hands. There was no shame in bending a knee, he thought, especially to a king anointed by God. It sometimes seemed to Richard that all men were made to kneel, that all they really desired was a shepherd who would keep them safe and take his cudgel to the wolves that threatened them. In exchange, Edward could have their daughters for his sport and they would not complain.
Richard shook his head, rolling his neck until it cracked and feeling the bunched strength of his shoulders. When he had been a boy, he had suffered terribly with a twisted spine. His father’s remedy had been for him to build such a pack of muscle and sinew that he could throw a blacksmith’s anvil across a yard. The pain had not gone, nor eased, so that he lived each day with spikes of it running along his flesh and into the bones themselves. Yet he had grown as strong as his father wanted. Just weeks from his eighteenth birthday, there were few of Edward’s guards who relished a bout with Richard any longer. Slim-waisted and fast, he was a thinking warrior, always looking for the place to put the blade. None of his bouts lasted long and he knew he frightened older men who felt the touch of winter in their limbs. His spring was still ahead.
Richard let himself slump further. If Edward had wanted, the two sons of York could have led the English and Welsh on a great crusade against the blasphemous Mahometans, or against France, or, by God, to the ends of the earth. The tragedy was that his brother preferred to ignore and to waste all he had gained. Edward was only truly happy in the deep wood or the wild moors, with his dogs and falcons and trusted men all about him.
Standing in the shadow of a king was not quite the joyful experience Richard had imagined when he had been a boy and a ward of Earl Warwick. His brother then had been in real peril, beset on all sides by Lancaster enemies. Only Edward’s strong right arm, only his faith and his honour had brought him through, though tens of thousands lay where they had fallen, gone to bones and rust and shallow graves in Towton Field.
Richard sank a fraction deeper into the cup of his hands, trying to ignore the shameless gasping a dozen feet behind him. The struggle to raise the crown and keep it seemed a nobler time, without a doubt. Before Warwick of all people had turned on them, making a traitor of Richard’s own brother, George of Clarence, kidnapping King Edward himself and holding him as a prisoner. Warwick had held back from royal murder, which was about all the good they could say of him. Up to that last blush, he had committed all the forms of treason named in law.
A peculiar knocking began to sound, echoing in the corridor at the top of the steps. The young duke raised his head to listen, then raised his eyes to the heavens above. He was not being summoned. His brother had left some part of his armour on and was denting the wall with complete abandon. Richard did not smile as he’d used to. There had been too many nights, no, too many months of drunken tourney
bouts, of fighting, wenching and huge feasts thrown down the open maw that was the king of England. Though Edward had not yet seen his thirtieth year, he had become too tight in his old armour and perforce paid fortunes for new sets with room to breathe.
Richard himself remained lean, his waist and back like seamed saddle-leather. When he remarked on the difference between them to his brother, Edward would only grin and pat his stomach and tell him a man needed a little meat. It was infuriating. He did not know whether it was that the rewards of the world had come too easily, or that Edward simply lacked the wit to appreciate and earn his luck. No man for a hundred miles would have begrudged the king a few local girls, nor the huge number of wineskins or jugs of ale he could empty at a sitting. Yet Richard had argued even so for them to return to London, to wait in dignity and calm restraint for his brother’s fourth child to be born.
‘It will be a girl,’ Edward had said, glowering at him on the sparring yard at Windsor. On that day, they had faced only jousting posts of padded oak. It had not been spoken aloud between them, but the brothers made a point of not facing each other. In his most private thoughts, Richard thought he had the skill and perhaps the speed, but his brother was a killing knight. His opponents were often carried from the tourney field, no matter how light the mood had been at first. Edward did not spar well, though he fought like an archangel.
Richard shifted on his step, looking across the tavern. There were a few old soaks wandering in as the twilight sank into darkness outside. Richard watched as three of them spotted the king’s guards and stood in indecision, licking dry lips. Their eyes flickered to the jugs of ale and then up to him, the slim swordsman blocking the upper floor and
watching everything that moved. One touched his forelock to him on instinct and backed out. Two more decided to stay, the choice visible in the slight rise of their heads and the way their shoulders dropped and settled back. They were free men after all, with coins they had earned. Richard smiled at the sight of their courage, feeling the small act raise his own spirits.
The world was hard and full of pain. He woke each morning with such a band of agony across his shoulders that he could barely move. Only his stretches and exercises could ease it down to the sullen aches he endured the rest of the time. He did not complain, though he had been given much to endure. Men lived with suffering, that was all there was to it. They killed what they ate. They lost their wives as they gave birth and even then, every family rich or poor found children cold and stiff in the mornings, burying them with their grief in frozen ground.
A duke was different again, Richard knew, a man who trained to exhaustion each day against the time he would stand in battle, or perhaps simply face another in armour who wished to take away everything he loved. It was a heartbreak his father had known, beheaded on a field close by his own castle of Sandal.
It was rare for Richard to have hands clear of broken blisters or his body unbruised. When he was weak of will, as his brother was weak, when he wanted to gorge his starving frame or drink himself to oblivion, or simply allow all his bruises to heal to spare himself from pain, he would recite the words a Benedictine monk had taught him for such times: ‘
Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro Satana
.’ ‘The dragon is not my master. Get thee behind, Satan.’ The words had become a talisman and saying them brought him back to calm. Richard lived in pain and his flesh was in opposition to
his will. Yet he would prevail, because all flesh failed, whereas the will was a sea deep enough to drown.
As high on the steps to the upper floor as he was, Richard was perhaps the first in the taproom to notice the king’s herald slipping through the tavern door as it swung closed. The man wore King Edward’s badge of a sun in flames, embroidered on a tabard across his chest. Such as he were required to carry no weapons nor any armour, beyond the authority of their masters. Richard noted the long dagger strapped to the man’s wide belt as well as the dusty chainmail that stretched from thigh to throat as he turned and took in the tavern. Not a trusting fellow then, he thought, his mouth turning up. Away from the cities, the law was a fickle thing.
He felt the herald’s gaze flicker across him and then settle. The man took only a single step towards the stairs before one of King Edward’s guards was there to block his path.
Richard gestured for the stranger to be let through, though the herald’s dagger was removed and left behind. His brother’s guards were careful men.
The herald would no doubt have known Richard of Gloucester by sight, even without the white boar embroidered on the breast of his black shirt. Richard saw the man’s eyes pass over it as he tried to bow on a flight of steps without sending himself head-over-heels. Good balance, Richard noted. The herald would acquit himself well in a brawl.
‘My lord Gloucester, I bear urgent news for His Highness King Edward.’
‘Speak then, if you know me. I will pass the words on to my brother.’
The fellow hesitated only a beat. London was arming for a war some two hundred miles to the south. He’d ridden every one of them without rest and had bruised places on his
bones he hadn’t felt for years. There was no room to stand on details.
‘My lord, Earl Warwick has landed and is gathering an army close by London.’ The herald’s gaze broke and he looked away as he went on, understanding the reaction it would bring. ‘The Duke of Clarence is said to be with him, my lord.’
Richard’s eyes tightened as he leaned forward.
‘My brother George? Well, he was always a fool. Is the queen safe?’ he said. The man’s skin grew shiny with sweat and he opened his hands in apology.
‘There will be others following with such news, my lord. I was sent from London by His Majesty’s Chamberlain, Lord Hastings. I believe I am the first to come with the news.’
Richard saw the herald was trembling, though whether it was from fear, or exhaustion or just coming into the warmth from the night, he did not know or care. He stood suddenly, almost sending the man tumbling down the stairs.
‘Wait down there while I talk to His Highness. He will have other questions.’
Richard strode along the corridor and knocked at a door even as he opened it, uncaring what he would see after such news. He stopped even so on the threshold, his mouth falling slightly open. A blonde serving girl had been lying naked on her stomach, tapping away at a wall with the heel of her shoe. Richard’s entrance interrupted her gleeful cries and she curled up, pulling blankets around her with a shriek.
King Edward the Fourth of England was lying supine on the bed, completely asleep and snoring softly. Another woman lay in the crook of his arm, sprawled with one paler arm across the expanse of his chest.
‘He said I should keep going …’ the girl at the wall said, tossing the shoe away and trying to cover herself. Richard
ignored her, stepping in and kicking his brother in the sole of his foot. He did not care what games Edward was playing, any more than he was embarrassed at his brother’s lolling nakedness, though he lay like a huge dead fish, thick-thighed and heavy, taking up the entire bed without any modesty. There were other matters to concern them. For a second time, Richard struck out, more savage than he had intended to be in his temper, risking his brother’s flesh on the blade of his spur.
‘Stop that,’ Edward murmured sleepily. He began to turn over, then sensed a man’s presence standing over him. Richard saw his brother go from relaxed stupor to awareness in a great spasm. The eyes snapped open and the king pushed the girl away, ready to launch himself from the bed. When he saw it was his younger brother, he blew out the great breath he had taken, chuckling and looking around for the jug of wine balanced precariously on a side table.
Edward began to make some inane comment and Richard spoke over him, irritated and strained.
‘There is an army come to London, under Earl Warwick. George is with him, of course. No news of Elizabeth yet, or your girls. I’m sorry. Come down now, would you? I’ll clear the inn.’
Without another word, Richard turned and walked out, leaving his brother to stare in dismay, then suddenly roar, reaching for his discarded clothes. The two strumpets were dismissed without being paid, though they made no word of complaint after what they had heard. Over woollen hose and undershirt, King Edward buttoned a thick tunic, still rank with his sweat. He stood swaying by the bed then, pissing long and hard into a pot dragged out from under, then sat once again to pull on his boots, yanking his leg right up into the air with the force of his hands on the leather ties. At the
last, he splashed cold water on his face and hair from another deep bowl set into the dresser. Making bear-like sounds, he dipped his face in, then blew and gasped and shook his jowls as he ran his hand over his features. His head was thumping with a dull pain above his right eye. He felt as if he might vomit and two of his back teeth were loose and hot, the legacy of some piece of meat trapped in there for a week. He’d have to have the damned things drawn before they poisoned him, he was certain.