Stormbird

25

‘The London gates are closed at night, Jack,’ Thomas said, pointing at the floor. The two men were alone on the upper floor of an inn in the town of Southwark, just across the river from the city. With a rug pulled back to reveal ancient floorboards, Thomas had scratched a rough map, marking the Thames and the line of Roman wall that enclosed the heart of the ancient city.

‘What, all of them?’ Jack replied. He’d never been to the capital and he was still convinced Woodchurch had to be exaggerating. Talk of sixty or eighty thousand people seemed impossible, and now he was supposed to believe there were huge great gates all around it?

‘That is the point of city gates, Jack, so yes. Either way, if we’re looking to reach the Tower, it’s inside the wall. Cripplegate and Moorgate are out — we’d have to march right round the city and the villagers there would be rushing off to fetch the king’s soldiers while we did. Aldgate to the east — you see it there? That one has its own garrison. I used to walk the streets there when I was courting Joan. We could cross the Fleet river to the west perhaps, and come in by the cathedral, but no matter where we enter, we have to go over the Thames — and there’s only one bridge.’

Jack frowned at the chicken scratches on the floor, trying to make sense of them.

‘I don’t much like the idea of charging down a road they know we have to take, Tom. You mentioned ferries before. What about using those, maybe further along, where it’s quieter?’

‘For a dozen men, that would be your answer. But how many do you have since Blackheath?’

Cade shrugged. ‘They keep coming in, Tom! Essex men, though, even some from London. Eight or nine thousand, maybe? No one’s counting them.’

‘Too many to ferry over anyway. There aren’t boats enough and it would take too long. We need to get in and out again ’fore the sun comes up. That’s if you want to live to a ripe old age. Of course, there’s still the chance the king and his lords will answer our petition, don’t you think?’

The two men looked at each other and laughed cynically, raising the cups they both held in silent toast to their enemies. At Thomas’s urging, Jack had allowed a list of demands to be taken to the London Guildhall on behalf of ‘The Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent’. Some of the men had suggested virgins and crowns for their personal use, of course, but the discussion had eventually settled down to genuine grievances. They were all sick of high taxes and cruel laws that applied only to those who could not buy their way out. The petition they’d sent to the London mayor and his aldermen would change the country if the king agreed. Neither Jack nor Thomas expected King Henry even to see it.

‘They won’t answer us,’ Thomas said. ‘Not without crossing the interests of all those who take bribes and keep the common families under their boot heels. They’ve no interest in treating us fair, so we’ll just have to knock sense into them. Look there — the Tower is close by London Bridge — no more than half a mile at most. If we take any other route in, we’ll have to find our way through a maze of streets even local men don’t know that well. You asked for my advice and that’s it. We come up from Southwark and cross the bridge around sunset, then cut east for the Tower before the king’s men even know we’re there amongst them. We’ll have to crack a few pates along the way, but if we keep moving, there aren’t enough soldiers in London to stop us. As long as we don’t get jammed into a small space, Jack.’

‘More people than I’ve ever seen, though,’ Jack muttered uncomfortably. He still couldn’t imagine such a vast number of men, women and children all crammed into the filthy streets. ‘Seems like they could stop us just by holding hands and standing still.’

Thomas Woodchurch laughed at the image.

‘Maybe they could, but they won’t. You heard the men you sent scouting. If half of it is true, Londoners are about as angry with the king and his lords as we are. They can hardly move or shit without some fat fool demanding a fine that goes into his pockets or to the lord that employs him. If you can keep your men from looting, Jack, they’ll welcome us in and cheer us all the way.’

He saw the big Kentish man glare at his map through red-rimmed eyes. Cade was drinking hard each evening and Thomas suspected he’d have stayed in Blackheath or the edge of Kent until doomsday. Cade was good enough in a stand-up fight against bailiffs or sheriff’s men, but he’d been lost at the task of taking on London. He’d fallen on Woodchurch like a drowning man, ready to listen. After all the bad fortune Thomas had suffered, he felt he was due a little of the other sort. For once, he felt he was in the right place at the right time.

‘You think we can do it?’ Jack mumbled, slurring. ‘There are a lot of men looking to me to keep them alive, Tom. I won’t see them all cut down. I’m not in this to fail.’

‘We won’t,’ Woodchurch said softly. ‘The country’s up in arms for a reason. This king of ours is a fool and a coward. I’ve lost enough to him and so have you — so have all the men with us. They’ll stand when they need to; you’ve shown that. They’ll stand and they’ll walk right into London’s Tower.’

Jack shook his head. ‘It’s a fortress, Tom,’ he said, without looking up. ‘We can’t be outside it when the king’s soldiers catch up with us.’

‘There are gates there and we have men with axes and hammers. I won’t say it will be easy, but you have eight or nine thousand Englishmen and, with that many, there isn’t much that will stand against us for long.’

‘Most of them are Kentish men, Tom Woodchurch,’ Jack said, his eyes glittering.

‘Better still, Jack. Better still.’ He chuckled as Cade clapped him on the back, making him stagger.

The sun was coming up when the two men lurched out of the inn and stood in the doorway, blinking at the light. The band of Freemen had raided every farm and village for five miles and many of them were lying in a stupor on the ground, senseless on stolen barrels of spirits or wine. Jack nudged a man with his foot and watched him slump, groaning without waking up. The man was holding a great leg of pork, his arms wrapped around it like a lover. They’d marched hard over the previous few days and Jack didn’t begrudge them the chance to rest.

‘All right, Tom,’ he said. ‘The men can sober up today. I might sleep a while, myself. We’ll go in tonight across the bridge.’

Thomas Woodchurch looked north, imagining the morning fires of London being lit, creating their greasy fog and the smells he remembered so vividly from his youth. His wife had returned to her family home with his daughters and he wondered if they even knew he and Rowan were alive. The thought of his women brought his brows down in sudden thought.

‘You’ll have to tell the men there’ll be no rape or looting, Jack. No drinking either, not till it’s done and we’re safe back here. If we turn the people against us, we’ll never get out of the city.’

‘I’ll tell them,’ Jack said sourly, glaring at him.

Thomas realized he’d come close to giving the big man an order and spoke to smooth over the moment of tension.

‘They’ll listen to you, Jack. You’re the one who brought them all here, every last one of them. They’ll follow you.’

‘Get some sleep, Woodchurch,’ Jack replied. ‘It’ll be a busy night for both of us.’

Derry Brewer was in a foul mood. With his boots clacking on the wooden floor, he paced the room above the water gate of the Tower, looking out on the slate-grey Thames rushing past. Margaret watched him from a bench seat, her hands held tightly in her lap.

‘I’m not saying they’ll ever get closer than they are now, my lady, but there’s an army on the edge of London and the whole city is either terrified or wanting to join them. I have Lord Scales and Lord Grey at me every day to send out royal soldiers to scatter Cade’s men, as if they’re all peasants who’ll run from the sight of a few horses.’

‘Are they not peasants, Derihew?’ she said, awkwardly using his Christian name. Since they’d been thrown together as allies, she’d asked Derry to call her Margaret, but he resisted still. She looked up as he stopped and turned, wondering whether he saw strength or weakness.

‘My lady, I have men strolling right through their camp. That fool Cade knows nothing about passwords or guards. In that drunken crowd, anyone can come or go as they please and, yes, most of them are labourers, apprentices, hard men. There are gentlemen there too, though, with friends in London. They have voices calling everywhere in their support and I smell York’s coins behind them.’ He blew out a breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘And I knew Jack Cade once, when he was just another big … um … devil, standing in ranks against the French. I heard he even fought for the French once, when they were paying better than us. There’s anger enough in him to burn London to the ground, my lady, if he gets the chance.’

He stopped speaking, considering whether he could ask one of his spies to put a dagger in Cade’s eye. It would mean the man’s death, of course, but Derry had the king’s purse available to him. He could pay a fortune to a widow and children, enough to tempt, at least.

‘No matter who they are, or why they’ve gathered, there’s a right horde of them, my lady, all shouting and giving speeches and working each other up to a fine lather. With a spark, London could be sacked. I’d be happier if I didn’t have to plan for the king’s safety, as well as everything else. If he was away from the city, I could act with a free hand.’

Margaret dipped her gaze, rather than be caught staring at her husband’s spymaster. She did not trust Derry Brewer completely, or understand him. She’d known he was on her side over the fate of William de la Pole, but it was weeks since a headless body had washed up with a dozen others at Dover. She closed her eyes briefly at a stab of pain for her friend. One of her hands clenched over the other.

Whether she trusted Derry Brewer or not, she knew she had few other allies at court. The riots seemed to be spreading and those lords who supported the Duke of York were not working too hard to put them down. It suited his faction of lords to have the country up in arms, roaring their discontent. She had learned to hate Richard of York, but hatred wouldn’t jar him from his course. London and her husband had to be made safe before anything else.

As Derry turned back to the window, she ran a hand lightly over her womb, praying for life within. Henry didn’t seem to remember their first stolen intimacy, as drugged and ill as he had been at the time. She had been bold enough to go to him half a dozen times since and it was true her fluxes were late that month. She tried not to hope too desperately.

‘My lady? Are you unwell?’

Her eyes came open and she blushed, unaware that it made her pretty. She looked away from Derry’s searching gaze.

‘I am a little weary, is all, Derry. I know my husband does not want to leave London. He says he must remain, to shame them for their treason.’

‘Whatever he wants, my lady, it will not help him if thousands of men tear London apart. I cannot say for certain that he is safe here; do you understand me? York has his whisperers in as many ears as I have — and a fat purse to bribe weak men. If Cade’s army comes in, it would be too easy to stage an attack on the king — and too hard to protect him with the city under siege.’

He stepped closer and his hand came up for a moment as if he might take hers in his grasp. He let it drop, thinking better of it.

‘Please, Your Highness. I asked to see you for this reason. King Henry has a castle at Kenilworth, not eighty miles from London on good roads. If he is well enough to travel, he could be there in just a few days by carriage. I would know my king is safe and it would be one less burden in defeating the rabble with Cade.’ He hesitated, then spoke again, his voice dropping. ‘Margaret, you should go with him. We have loyal soldiers, but with Cade so close, the people themselves are rioting and looting. They block roads and there are mobs gathering all over the city. Cade coming in will be the tipping point, the spark. This could go badly for us and I do not doubt York’s supporters have marked you well. After all, your fine and loyal members of Parliament have made York the royal heir “in the event of misfortunes”.’ Derry almost spat the words of the decree. ‘It would be madness to invite exactly what they want. To stay is to hold the knife to your own breast.’

Margaret looked steadily into his eyes as he spoke, asking herself again how much she trusted this man. What advantage would he gain with the king and queen gone from London, beyond his claims and the ease of his fears? She knew by then that Derry Brewer was not a simple man. There was rarely one reason for him to do anything. Yet she had seen his grief and rage when he heard of William’s murder. Derry had disappeared for two days, drinking himself into a stupor in one London tap-house after another. That had been real enough. She made her decision.

‘Very well, Derry. I will ask my husband to go to Kenilworth. I will stay in London.’

‘You’d be safer away,’ he said immediately.

Margaret didn’t waver.

‘There is nowhere safe for me, Derry, not as things stand. I am not a child any longer, to have the truth hidden from me. I am not safe while other men covet my husband’s throne. I am not safe while my womb is empty! Well, a pox on all that! I will stay here and I will watch my husband’s lords and soldiers defend the capital. Who knows, you may have need of me, before the end.’

Cade rolled his shoulders, looking out over a host of men that stretched far beyond the light of the crackling torches. He was feeling strong, though his throat was dry and he would have liked another drink to warm his belly. The summer twilight had faded slowly, but darkness was truly upon them at last and an army waited on his word. God knew, he’d stood with smaller forces against the French! He looked around him in awe, sensing rather than seeing the extraordinary number of men who’d gathered. He knew at least half of them had come to him after some injustice. He’d heard a hundred angry stories, more. Men who had lost everything in France, or had their lives and families wrecked by some judgment of the courts. With everything taken away from them, they’d all come to walk with Jack Cade.

His original few thousand men of Kent had almost been swallowed by the mass of latecomers from Essex and London itself. He shook his head in wonder at that thought. There were scores there who lived within London’s walls yet were willing to march with billhook and sword against their own city. He didn’t understand them, but then they weren’t Kentish men, so he didn’t try.

His lieutenants had been busy all day, taking names and getting the army ready to march. Over the previous few weeks, the newcomers had arrived in such numbers it had been all he could do to assign them to a particular officer and leave them to find weapons for themselves. Paddy seemed to enjoy the work and Jack thought he’d have made a fine sergeant in the real army. With Ecclestone and Woodchurch, he’d worked to bring some order to the mass of men, especially those who had no training at all. The vast majority had some sort of iron in their hands and there was only one way to point them. Jack had no idea how they’d fare against royal troops in mail and plate, but at least the narrow streets of London would take away the threat of horsemen at the charge. His men walked, foot soldiers all, but then that was the sort of army he understood and he didn’t sweat too hard at the lack of mounts.

On his left, he could see the little Scot, Tanter, on the enormous beast of a plough horse he’d been given. Jack thought the man looked like a fly sitting on an ox, with his legs tucked up under him. Tanter was watching a pair of mistle thrushes, darting and soaring in an empty evening sky. The air was already thick and a bank of dark clouds was massing to the west. Cade suddenly remembered his mother telling him the thrushes were the last birds in the air before a great storm. Country folk would see them flying alone on the wind and know a tempest was on its way. Jack smiled at the memory. He was bringing the storm to the city that night, walking with it all around him, in the faces and cold iron of angry men.

A dozen of the biggest Kent lads stood close to Cade, grinning wolfishly in the light of the torches held high in their hands. It made a ring of light around him, so that they could all see their leader, as well as the Kentish banner they followed. Jack looked down at the boy carrying the pole, just one of a hundred keen lads they’d picked up along the way. Some of them were sons of the men, others just homeless urchins who’d followed in their wake, fighting over scraps and staring with wide eyes at adults who looked so fierce with their blades and tools.

Jack saw the boy was watching him and he winked.

‘What’s your name, lad?’

‘Jonas, captain,’ the boy replied, awed at having Cade speak to him.

‘Well, raise it up, Jonas,’ Jack said. ‘Both hands and steady, lad. It’s a good Kentish sign — and a warning.’

Jonas straightened, lifting the pole like a banner. The boy lacked the strength to hold it steady and it swayed in the golden light under the weight of the white-horse shield and the sheriff’s head.

‘You keep that high while we march. The men need to see it and know where I am, all right?’

‘Yes, captain,’ Jonas said proudly, staring in concentration at the wavering point above him.

‘Ready, captain!’ Paddy bellowed from over on his right.

‘Ready, Jack!’ Woodchurch shouted, further back.

Cade smiled as the calls were echoed all around him, until there were hundreds, then thousands repeating it in a growl of sound. They were ready.

Jack inflated his chest to give the order to march, but he saw a fellow pushing through the ranks towards him and waited to see what he was after. Heads turned to follow as the man grunted and slipped through, arriving panting at Jack’s side. He was a small man, with the sallow skin, thin arms and hollow cheeks that only decades of poverty could produce. Jack beckoned him closer.

‘What is it? Lost your nerve?’ he said, making his voice kind as he saw the man’s worry and fear written into every line of him.

‘I … I’m sorry, Jack,’ the man said, almost stammering. He looked around him at the glowering axemen and briefly up to the Kentish banner. To Jack’s surprise, he crossed himself as if he saw a holy relic.

‘Do I know you, son?’ Jack said, confused. ‘What brings you to me?’

Cade was leaning close to hear the reply when the man lunged towards his neck, a dagger in his hand. With a curse, Jack smacked it away with a raised arm, hissing in pain as the blade cut the back of his hand. The knife flew out of the man’s grip, clattering against metal and vanishing. Jack clenched his jaw and reached out with both hands, grabbing the man’s head and twisting hard. The man screeched and struggled until a snap sounded and he went limp. Jack let the body fall bonelessly to the ground.

‘Fuck you, boy, whoever the hell you were,’ he said to the corpse. He found he was breathing hard as he looked up into the shocked faces of the men around him.

‘Well? Did you think we didn’t have enemies? London’s sly, and don’t you forget it. Whatever they promised him, I’m still standing and he’s done.’

At a sudden flurry of movement, Cade spun round, convinced he was about to be attacked again. He saw Ecclestone barge through the crowd, with his razor held high, ready to kill. Jack faced him, raising his shoulders bullishly as rage filled him with strength.

‘You too?’ he growled, readying himself.

Ecclestone looked down at the body, then up into Jack’s eyes.

‘What? Christ, no, Jack. I was following him. He looked nervous and he kept creeping closer to you.’

Jack watched as his friend folded the narrow blade and made it vanish.

‘You were a bit late then, weren’t you?’ he said.

Ecclestone gestured uncomfortably to where blood dripped from Jack’s hands.

‘He cut you?’ he asked.

‘It’s not bad.’

‘I’ll stay close, Jack, if you don’t mind. We don’t know half of the men now. There could be others.’

Jack waved away the idea, his good mood already returning.

‘They’ve shot their bolt, but stay if it makes you happy. Are you ready, lads?’

The men around him were still pale and shocked at what they had witnessed, but they mumbled assent.

‘Watch my back while we march then, if it pleases you,’ Jack said. ‘I’m for London. They know we’re coming and they’re frightened. So they should be. Raise that pole high, Jonas! I bloody told you once! Let them see us coming.’

They cheered him as he set off, thousands of men walking in the darkness towards the capital. Fat drops of warm, summer rain began to fall, making the torches sizzle and spit. The men talked and laughed as they went, as if they were strolling to a market day or a county fair.

Cripplegate remained open, lit by braziers on iron poles. The king’s carriage was enclosed against the cold, with Henry well wrapped inside. Around the king, sixty mounted knights were his escort north, taking him away from the capital city. Henry looked out at the lighted gate, trying to turn in his seat to see it shut behind him. The ancient Roman wall stretched away in both directions, enclosing his city and his wife. His hands trembled and he shook his head in confusion, reaching for the door and opening it part of the way. The movement brought the instant attention of Lord Grey, who turned his horse towards the king’s carriage.

Henry gathered his thoughts, feeling the process like grasping threads. He recalled speaking to Margaret, asking her to come with him to Kenilworth, where she would be safe. Yet she was not there. She’d said Master Brewer had asked her to stay.

‘Where is my wife, Lord Grey?’ he asked. ‘Is she coming soon?’

To Henry’s surprise, the man did not respond. Lord Grey coloured as he dismounted and came to the carriage side. Henry blinked at him in confusion.

‘Lord Grey? Did you hear me? Where is my wife, Margaret …?’

He broke off, suddenly sensing it was a question he had asked many times before. He knew he’d been dreaming for a time. The physician’s draughts made false things seem real and dreams as vivid as reality. He could no longer tell the difference. Henry felt a gentle pressure on the carriage door as Lord Grey pushed on it, looking away at the same time so he would not have to see his king’s wide eyes and grief-stricken expression.

The door shut with a soft click, leaving Henry peering out of the small square of glass. When it misted with his breath he rubbed at it, in time to see Grey shake his head at one of the knights.

‘I’m afraid the king is unwell, Sir Rolfe, not quite in his right mind.’

The knight looked uncomfortable as he glanced back at the pale face watching him. His head dipped.

‘I understand, my lord.’

‘I hope so. It would be unwise of you to suggest I ever closed a door on my sovereign, Sir Rolfe. If we understand each other …?’

‘We do, Lord Grey, of course. I saw nothing of note.’

‘Very good. Driver! Ride on.’

A long whip snapped in the air and the carriage began to move away, bouncing and shuddering on the potholed road. As it went, the wind blew harder and it began to rain, the heavy drops drumming on the carriage roof and the dusty ground.