Stormbird

13

Surprise was a strange thing, Thomas thought to himself. He could feel it like coins in his hand: heavy and valuable, but something he could spend only once. He’d seen French armies before, but nothing like the neat ranks marching along a main road in southern Maine. The ones he’d known in his youth had been miserable beggars, half-starved and dressed in whatever ragged coats they could steal. In the still air, he could hear French voices singing and he shook his head in irritation. The sound offended some deep part of him.

The English found their soldiers from the poorest parts of cities like Newcastle, York, Liverpool and London, from mines and fields and apprentices who had fallen out with their masters and had nowhere else to go. He’d been a volunteer himself, but there were many more who were too drunk to resist a tap on the head when the recruiters came through their villages. It didn’t matter how it happened. Once you were in, you were in for good, no matter what you’d planned for your life. It was too much for some, of course, with terrible punishments meted out to those who tried to run. Even if a deserter made it clear on some moonless night, he’d be denounced at home by his own relatives, out for the reward for returning a king’s man.

Thomas’s thoughts were dark as he remembered his first months of training. He’d volunteered after giving his father a beating that was long overdue. It was either join up or risk the magistrates when the old sod woke up without his front teeth. So many years later, Thomas was only sorry he hadn’t killed him. His father had died since, leaving him nothing beyond the same violent temper simmering beneath the surface.

He’d met Derry Brewer on his first day, when four hundred young men were being taught to march in time with each other. They hadn’t even seen a weapon that month, just endless drills for fitness and wind. Derry had been able to run the legs off them all and still knock a man down with his fists at the end. Thomas shook his head, distressed at memories that had soured for him. He and Derry had been friends once, but it was Derry who’d given away the Woodchurch land, Derry who was responsible for the diabolical deal for Anjou and Maine. Whatever happened from that point, they weren’t friends any longer.

Thomas looked over at his men waiting at the treeline. He’d laughed at the dyed green wool they’d used, saying it hadn’t helped old Rob Hood. It had taken time away from archery practice to combine blue woad with a yellow dye that produced the rich colour. Even so, Thomas had to admit Strange had been right about that, at least. Even when a man knew where they were, the bowmen were damned hard to see as they crouched and waited. Thomas tried to find Rowan among them. He’d seen no sign of his family anger in his son, perhaps the result of mother’s milk compared to the vinegar and spit of his own line. Or perhaps he would see it come out in the killing as it had with him. That was another thing he and Derry had shared. They both had an anger that only grew with violence. No matter how hard they hit, it was still there behind the eyes, clawing away in a red room, scratching to be let out. It just had to be woken.

Slowly, Thomas turned back to the lines of fighting men striding or riding along the road as if they were heading to a saint’s day celebration or a feast. The French had no scouts out and he saw they were dressed warm and snug and carried decent pikes and swords. There was even a band of crossbowmen, strolling along with their weapons uncocked and resting on their shoulders. Thomas clenched his jaw, disgusted with all of them.

Further back, he could just make out the French royal party, trotting on fine grey horses with bright headpieces of red or blue. It was spring and Anjou was behind them. Every man there had spent months getting drunk and slow on stolen wine. Thomas showed his teeth, knowing they could not see him. His two dozen arrows were ready and he’d spent part of the gold he’d made from wool and mutton on having as many fletched as he could over the long winter. One thing was certain — his men wouldn’t be able to get their arrows back afterwards.

For a moment, he considered letting the French king come abreast of him before the attack. It could only help their cause if they slotted an arrow down a royal throat and it would sound across France like a struck bell, telling men everywhere that Maine would fight. Yet the king’s personal guard could afford breastplates of thicker iron. Many of them wore extra layers of leather and padded cloth under their armour. It made a crushing weight, but then they were all big, powerful men, easily strong enough to fight under the added burden.

Thomas hesitated, feeling the responsibility and the advantage of surprise once more. When it was gone, when it was spent, he and his men would be facing an enraged army torn out of their comfort and ease. An army with hundreds of horsemen to run them down like foxes in the trees and fields. He’d seen it happen before and he knew the bitter reality of seeing archers caught in the open, unable to defend themselves before they were cut down. He could not let that happen to Rowan, or Strange, or Highbury, or any of the others who depended on him. Thomas wasn’t exactly certain when he’d become the leader of their motley group, but even Highbury accepted his right, especially after he and Strange had almost come to blows in a discussion of their mutual ancestors.

Thomas smiled to himself. That had been a good evening, with his men singing and laughing around a huge bonfire in the woods. Perhaps Robin of the Hood had known nights just like it, with his men dressed in Lincoln green.

He made his decision. The king had to be a target. Just one lucky arrow could end it as it began, and he could not give up the chance. The French army strolled on, just two hundred yards away across bushes and scrubland before the trees opened out on to a vast forest. At Agincourt, England had fielded six thousand men who could hit a target the size of a man’s head at that distance and then do it again, ten or even twelve times a minute. He’d had Highbury’s archers and his own veterans practising each day until they could pass his personal test — when their right arms were strong enough and large enough to crack two walnuts held in the crook of their elbows.

Thomas stood up slowly in the dappled shade, breathing long and slow. For a quarter-mile, men rose with him, tapping nervous fingers on their bows and shafts for luck. He raised a hunting horn to his lips and blew a harsh note, then let it fall on the thong around his neck and sighted on his first man.

The closest French soldiers looked round in surprise as they heard the horn sound. Thomas stared down the shaft as a knight in armour rode up along the host of slanted pikes to see what was happening. Some of them pointed in the direction of the trees and the man wheeled his horse, raising his visor and staring into the green.

Thomas could not read, even if he’d had the knowledge of it. Books blurred to his eyes up close, but at a distance he still had an archer’s sight. He saw the knight jerk as he spotted or sensed something.

‘Surprise,’ Thomas whispered. He loosed and the knight took the arrow in the centre of his face as he tried to shout, sending him backwards over the haunches of his mount and falling into the pikemen around him.

All along the line, arrows punched out from the trees, then again in a rhythm Thomas knew as well as breathing. This was why he’d drilled and drilled them until their fingertips were swollen to fat grapes. His bowmen reached down to shafts they’d stuck into the black earth and pulled them free, slotting them on and drawing smoothly. The snap of bows was a clatter he loved to hear. A quarter of a mile and two hundred men loosing again and again into the crowded lines.

The French soldiers bunched up in their panic, yelling and helpless as shafts ripped into them. Hundreds fell or dropped to the ground and Thomas shouted a wordless challenge as he saw the king’s own guards reel as they were struck.

The knights around the king were battered and thumped as they raised shields over King Charles and yelled commands. Horns blew across the valley floor and Thomas could see a thousand men or more come charging in. French knights and mounted men-at-arms spurred and kicked their horses hard, drawing swords and galloping towards the strip that had been torn out of their army, the bloody slash that looked as if a giant had crushed a footstep into them.

Thomas sent three of his precious bodkin arrows towards the king before he focused again on the men in front of him. The destruction was greater than even he had hoped, but it meant fewer targets and he saw dozens of shafts pass through scrambling men and miss completely.

‘Aim for knights and horses!’ he roared along the line.

He saw a hundred archers turn almost together, seeking out the same targets. More than one knight galloping to the rescue was struck by a dozen shafts, to fall broken and dead before he hit the ground. Thomas cursed to see the king flailing in his saddle, visibly alive though the noblemen around him showed red blood on their armour. They began to move the king back through the press of men riding in and still the archers shot and shot, until they reached down and their fingers closed on empty air.

Thomas checked his own quiver as he always did, though he knew it was empty. Twenty-four arrows had gone in what seemed like a heartbeat and by then the French army looked like some fool had knocked over a beehive. They formed up over the heaps of dead as the arrow storm began to falter.

It was time to run. Thomas had been staring in delight at the chaos, fixing the scene in his mind. Yet it was time and he dragged his attention away from the enemy. A last glance confirmed the French king was still alive, being hustled back by his men. Thomas found he was panting and he struggled to take a deep enough breath to sound the horn.

At the signal, his line of archers broke instantly, turning their backs on the French and racing off through the trees. More horns sounded behind them and once again Thomas knew the sick terror of being hunted.

His breath was harsh and loud as he crashed through bushes and around trees, jarring his shoulder on a branch as he tried to duck under it and falling, only to scramble up again at full speed. He could hear the snorting of horses pounding the earth as armoured knights reached the treeline and forced their way through.

Over on his left, he saw one of his men fall and from nowhere a French knight appeared, aiming a lance into the man’s back as he staggered to his feet. Thomas put on another burst of speed, appalled at how fast the French had gathered themselves. He hoped desperately that it was just one knight ahead of the rest. If they were that quick on the counter, he’d lose half his men before they reached the meadows beyond.

He heard hooves close behind him, with a jingle of harness. Thomas jinked from instinct, hearing a French voice curse as a knight missed his strike. The man’s lance point dropped and wedged in the earth, though the knight was too canny to hold on to it. Thomas didn’t dare look back, though he heard a sword drawn over the noise of his own racing steps. He cringed, expecting the strike as the forest brightened ahead of him and he realized he’d covered half a mile as fast as he’d ever run in his life.

Thomas broke out into spring sunshine, finding himself facing a line of archers with bows raised towards him. He threw himself down and they sent quick shots over his head. He heard a horse scream and, as he lay gasping, he looked back for the first time, seeing his pursuer crash to the ground at full speed as his horse collapsed with its lungs pierced.

Thomas forced himself up and on, red-faced and gasping as he staggered to the line and the second set of quivers they’d prepared. He thanked God the younger men had been faster than he was over rough ground. The fallen knight was beginning to rise when Thomas drew a new arrow and sent it through the man’s neck.

The meadow was wider than it was deep, an open strip of ferns and heavy thorn bushes, with a few stubborn oaks around a pond. It had been the obvious place for his men to fall back to, the fruit of local knowledge from boys who used to play and fish for newts there when they were young.

Thomas looked along the line for Rowan and breathed in relief when he saw him standing with the others. They’d lost a few men in the mad dash through the woods, but before he could call to his son, the trees erupted, mounted knights scattering small branches and leaves as they rode hard into the sunlight.

They died just as hard, hammered and battered as they entered the open space. The last of Thomas’s archers staggered among them, some dying from their wounds. One or two of those were killed by their friends as they shot at anything they saw moving.

Thomas waited, trying to control his racing heart. He could hear crashing and horns blowing in the forest, but the numbers breaking through to them dwindled to nothing and he stood there, waiting. Surprise. He had used it all. The French knew they were in a fight for Maine. He cursed aloud at the thought of the French king still among the living. Just one arrow in the right place and they would have won it all in a day, perhaps even saved his farm and his family.

He waited for a time, but no more knights came through and Thomas reached for his horn, only to find it gone, with a painful stripe along his neck to show where it had lain. He could not remember it being torn free and he rubbed in confusion at the red welt before raising his fingers to his lips and blowing a sharp tone.

‘Away!’ he called, gesturing with his aching right arm.

They turned immediately, trotting as fast as they could into the trees beyond. Thomas saw a couple of men bearing a friend, while others were left behind to bleed and cry out in vain. He closed his ears to the voices calling after him.

Margaret loved the Tower of London. It wasn’t just the way it made Saumur Castle look like a charcoal-burner’s shack in comparison. The Tower was a complex of buildings as big as a village in its own right, girdled in huge walls and gatehouses. It was an ancient fortress protecting the most powerful city in England, and Margaret had begun to explore every part of it, making it hers in her mind as she had done with the Crow Room and the secret passages at Saumur.

London in the spring brought fresh breezes that were quite unable to carry away the stink of the city. Even where Roman sewers had survived, heavy rains summoned ancient filth to the surface, flowing as a tide of slurry down every hill. On most streets, pots of urine and faeces were thrown out into a deep slop of animal and human dung, trodden down with the rotting guts of animals and the congealed blood of slaughtered pigs. The smell was indescribable and Margaret had seen the wooden shoes Londoners wore over their boots, raising them up high so they could go about their business.

She had been told that if the planets were aligned in some way she did not understand, poisonous vapours arose and summer plagues would rip through the population. William said there had been even more people when his father was a child, with war and pestilence taking a terrible toll. Outside the city, whole villages had been left to grass and weeds, with their inhabitants all fled or boarded into their houses to die and be forgotten. Yet London survived. It was said that the people there were hardened to it, so they could breathe and eat almost anything and live.

Margaret shuddered delicately at the thought. On that spring day at the Tower, she could see pale blue skies and white clouds hanging like a painting above her head. Birds flew and the air seemed sweet enough up where she walked the crown of the walls, speaking to blushing soldiers as they found themselves under the scrutiny of a fifteen-year-old queen.

She stared south, imagining Saumur Castle across the sea. Her mother’s letter had made their financial situation clear, but that was one thing Margaret had been able to put right. With just a word from her, Henry had agreed to send twelve hundred pounds in silver coins, enough to run the estate for two years or more. Margaret frowned to herself at the thought. Her husband was most amenable. He agreed to anything she wanted, but there was something wrong; she could sense that much. Yolande had returned to her husband’s estate and she dared not confide in anyone else. Margaret considered writing a letter, but she suspected they would be read, at least for the first few years. She wondered if she could find a way to ask questions about men that would not be understood by Derry Brewer. She shook her head as she stood there, doubting her ability to get anything past that infuriating man.

The subject of her thoughts broke in on them at that moment, clambering up to the highest point of the walls and smiling as he saw her.

‘Your Royal Highness!’ he cried. ‘I heard you were up here. I tell you my heart’s in my mouth at the thought of you falling to your death. I think it would mean war within the year, all from a loose stone or a single slip. I’d be happier if you’d accompany me back to the ground. I think the guards would be as well.’

He came up to her and took her arm gently, trying to steer her back to the closest set of steps heading down. Margaret felt a spike of irritation and refused to move.

‘My lady?’ Derry asked, looking wounded.

‘I won’t fall, Master Brewer. And I’m not a child to be shepherded to safety.’

‘I don’t think the king would be happy at the thought of his new wife on these walls, my lady.’

‘Really? I think he would be perfectly happy. I think he would say “If Margaret wishes it, Derry, I am content,” don’t you think?’

For a moment, they both glared at each other, then Derry dropped his hand from her arm with a shrug.

‘As you say, then. We are all in God’s hands, my lady. I did see your husband this morning, to discuss matters of state that cannot be ignored. I hesitate to suggest he misunderstood something you said to him, but he told me to seek you out. Is there something you would like to say to me?’

Margaret looked at the man, wishing William were there and wondering how far she could trust Derry Brewer.

‘I am pleased he remembered, Master Brewer. It gives me hope.’

‘I have documents that he must seal, my lady, today if possible. I cannot answer for the consequences if there is another delay.’

Margaret controlled her anger with some difficulty.

‘Master Brewer, I want you to listen. Do you understand? I want you to stop talking and just hear me.’

Derry’s eyes widened in surprise.

‘Of course, my lady. I understand. I just …’

She held up a hand and he fell silent.

‘I have sat with my husband as he met noble lords and men from his council, this Parliament of yours. I have watched them present their petitions and discuss his finances in great detail. I have seen you come and go, Master Brewer, with your armfuls of documents. I have witnessed you guiding Henry’s hand to place the wax and the royal seal.’

‘I don’t understand, my lady. I was there when we arranged to send a fortune to your mother. Is that the source of your concern? The king and I …’ Once more Derry halted the torrent of words as she raised her hand.

‘Yes, Master Brewer. I too have called on the king’s purse. You do not need to bring it up. He is my husband, after all.’

‘And he is my king,’ Derry replied, his voice hardening subtly. ‘I have dealt with him and aided him for as long as you have lived.’

Margaret felt her nerve begin to fail under the cold stare. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat and her heart pounded. Yet it was too important to let go.

‘Henry is a good man,’ she said. ‘He has no suspicions, no evil in him. Will you deny it? He does not read the petitions, or the laws he must sign, or if he does, he only glances at them. He trusts, Master Brewer. He wants to please those who come to him with their tales of woe or terrible urgency. Men like you.’

The words had been said and for the first time Derry looked embarrassed, breaking her gaze and staring across the walls and moat to the Thames meandering past. Beyond the water gate under St Thomas’s Tower, there were boats out there, dredging the bottom with long hooked poles. Derry knew that another pregnant girl had drowned herself off London Bridge the night before. A crowd had seen her holding a swollen belly as she climbed over the edge. They’d cheered her on, of course, until she dropped and was swallowed by the dark waters. The boatmen were looking out for her corpse, so they could sell it to the Guild of Surgeons. Those men paid particularly well for the pregnant ones.

‘Your Highness, there is some truth in what you’ve said. The king is a trusting man, which is all the more reason to have good men around him! Believe me when I say I am a careful judge of those who are allowed into his presence.’

‘A guardian, then? Is that how you see yourself, Master Brewer?’ Margaret found her nervousness disappearing and her voice strengthened. ‘If that is the case, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Do you know your Latin, Master Brewer? Who guards the guards?’

Derry closed his eyes for a moment, letting the breeze dry the sweat that had broken out on his forehead.

‘I didn’t hear much Latin round my way, my lady, not when I was a boy. Your Highness, you are just fifteen years old, whereas I have kept the kingdom safe for more than a decade. Do you not think I have proved my honour by now?’

‘Perhaps,’ Margaret said, refusing to give way. ‘Though it would be a rare man who took no advantage from a king who trusts him so completely.’

‘I am that man, my lady, on my honour I am. I have not sought titles or wealth. I have given all my strength to him, for his glory and the glory of his father.’

The words seemed to have been dragged out of Derry as he stood with his hands splayed, resting on the stone wall. Margaret felt suddenly ashamed, though there was still a whisper of suspicion that Derry Brewer was not above manipulating her as easily as he did the king. She gathered her resolve.

‘If what you say is true, you will not object to my reading the documents that come before Henry, will you, Master Brewer? If you have the honour you claim, there can be no harm in that. I asked Henry for his permission and he granted it to me.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course he did,’ Derry said sourly. ‘You’ll read it all? You’ll submit the fate of a kingdom to the judgement of a fifteen-year-old girl with no training in the law and no experience of ruling more than a single castle, if even that? Do you understand what you are asking and the certain consequences of it?’

‘I did not say I was asking, Master Brewer!’ Margaret snapped. ‘I told you what the king of England said. Now you may disobey his command or not, depending on whether you wish to continue in your role — or not! Either way, yes, I will read it all. I will see every document, every law that comes for my husband to seal in wax. I will read them all.’

Derry turned to her and she saw fury in his eyes. He had been reeling ever since King Henry had refused his request that morning. Refused! He had asked the king to look over a sheaf of documents and the man had shaken his head in what seemed like genuine regret, directing him to ask his wife. Derry could still hardly believe it. It seemed there had been no mistake, he thought grimly.

Margaret stared back, daring him to refuse her. After a time, Derry bowed his head.

‘Very well, my lady. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you what this means.’

They went down the steps together to the main grounds, as busy with soldiers and staff as a market day in any large town. Derry led the way across the crowded sward and Margaret followed, determined not to give up the least part of what she had won, whatever it turned out to be.

The White Tower was the oldest part of the fortress, built in pale Caen stone from France by William the Conqueror almost four centuries before. It loomed above them as Derry waved her up the wooden stairs that led to the only entrance. In time of war, the stairs could be removed, making the tower practically impregnable to assault. Inside the massive outer walls, she and Derry passed sentries and went up more stairs and through a dozen chambers and corridors before he halted at a thick oak door and turned the handle.

The room beyond was filled with scribes. High above the rest of the fortress, under the beams of a pitched roof marked in centuries of soot, they sat and scratched on vellum or bound scrolls in ribbons of different colours, passing them onwards and downwards to their superiors. Margaret’s eyes widened as she saw piles of parchment stacked to the ceiling in a few places, or waiting to be moved on upright wooden trolleys.

‘All of this amounts to just a few days, my lady,’ Derry said softly. ‘It is parchment that rules the kingdom, coming in and out of here to all the nobles and merchants and leaseholds and crofts — hundreds of ancient disputes and rents, my lady. Everything from the pay for a maid, to petitions for soldiers, to the debts on a great castle — it all comes through here. And this is just one room. There are others in the palaces of Westminster and Windsor that are at least as busy.’

He turned to her, aware that all movement had ceased as the scribes understood the queen herself had come into their cramped and stuffy domain.

‘No one man can possibly read it all, my lady,’ Derry went on complacently. ‘No woman either, if you’ll forgive me. What small part reaches the king has already been checked and handed on to the most senior scribes, then passed again to the king’s chamberlain and stewards. Men like Lord Suffolk will read some of it, as steward of the king’s household. He will answer a few himself, or rule on them, but he too will pass on a part. Would you have it all stop, my lady? Would you clog the pipe that flows through this room with just your hands and eyes? You would not see daylight again for years. That would not be a fate I’d choose for myself, I’ll tell you that much.’

Margaret hesitated, awed by the room and the deathly silence her presence had created. She could feel the eyes of the scribes wandering over her like beetles on her skin and she shuddered. She could sense Derry’s triumph at the mountain he’d shown her, the impossibility of reading it all. Just the documents in that room alone would take a lifetime, and he said all that was the fruit of a few days? She was reluctant to give up the advantage she had won just by being up there and she did not answer at first. The solution was clearly to read only the most important demands and petitions, the ones that found their way into Henry’s own hands. Yet if she did that, Derry Brewer would still control the vast mass of communication in the king’s purview. He was telling her as much, with the tableau of scribes to make his point. She began to appreciate what a dangerously powerful man he actually was.

She smiled, more for the benefit of the scribes than Derry himself. With a hand laid on his arm, she spoke sweetly and calmly.

‘I will see and read the parchments my husband must sign, Master Brewer. I will ask William, Lord Suffolk, to describe the rest, if he sees so many in his new role. I’m certain he can tell me which ones are important and which can be safely left to the king’s chamberlain and others. Does that not sound like a fine solution to this mountain of work? I am grateful to be shown this room and those who labour here without reward. I will mention them to my husband, to their honour.’

She sensed the scribes beaming at the words of praise, while Derry only cleared his throat.

‘As you say, then, my lady.’

He kept his smile in place, though he seethed inwardly. With anyone else, he knew he could persuade Henry to change his mind, but the king’s own wife? The young woman who had him alone each evening in the royal rooms? He wondered if she was still a virgin, which might perhaps explain why she felt she needed to fill her time in such a way. Unfortunately, that was one subject he dared not raise.

Derry led her back down through the White Tower. At the final set of steps leading outside, he raised his hand to the small of her back to guide her, then thought better of it, so that she gathered her skirts and walked down without his aid.