Stormbird

28

Jack Cade came out of the Guildhall, winding a bit of rough hemp rope in his hands. He’d cheered with Ecclestone and the others when the king’s own treasurer had been strung up to dance, the lord’s face growing purple as they watched and laughed. Lord Say had been one of those responsible for the king’s taxes and Jack felt no remorse at all. In fact, he’d cut the piece of rope as a keepsake and he was only sorry he couldn’t find a few more of those who commanded the bailiffs and sheriffs around the country.

When he looked up from his thoughts, his eyes widened. There were still men coming into the open square around the Guildhall. Those who had been there for some time had found barrels of beer or spirits, that much was clear. Already drunk on violence and success, they’d used the time he’d been inside to loot every house around. Some of them were singing, others lying completely senseless, or dozing with their arms wrapped around cork-stoppered clay bottles. Still more were taking out their spite on the survivors of the last group to attack them. The few king’s soldiers left alive had been disarmed and were being shoved back and forth in a ring of men, punched and kicked wherever they turned.

Jack glanced at Ecclestone in disbelief as he saw staggering men walk past with armfuls of stolen goods. Two of them were wrestling with a bolt of shimmering cloth, coming to blows and knocking each other down as he stared at them. Jack frowned as a woman began screaming nearby, the sound becoming a croak as someone choked her to silence.

Thomas Woodchurch came out behind Cade, his expression hardening as he viewed the chaos and blood-spattered stones.

‘Sodom and Gomorrah, Jack,’ he muttered. ‘If it goes on, they’ll all be asleep by dawn and they’ll find their throats cut. Can you put them back in harness? We’re vulnerable here — and drunken fools can’t fight.’

Cade was a little tired of Woodchurch thinking he knew best all the time. He kept silent, thinking. His own throat ached for a drink, but it would wait, he told himself. The rainstorm had passed, but London was still reeling. He sensed his one chance was in danger of slipping away. He’d bowed his head to king’s men all his life, been forced to look down from the hard eyes of judges as they put on the red or green robe and pronounced their judgments. For just a time, he could kick their teeth in, but he knew it wouldn’t last.

‘Come tomorrow, they’ll appoint new men to chase us,’ he grumbled. ‘But what if they do? I have put the fear of God into them tonight. They’ll remember that.’

Woodchurch looked up at the Kentish captain, his irritation showing. He’d hoped for more than just a night of bloodshed and looting. With a fair number of the men, he’d hoped to change the city, perhaps even to wrench some sort of freedom from the hands of the king’s men. They’d all learned King Henry was long gone by then, but it didn’t have to end in drunken madness, not if Cade kept going. A few dead nobles, a few bits of cloth and pouches of gold. It was nowhere near enough to repay what had been taken.

‘Dawn can’t be far off now,’ Woodchurch said. ‘I’m for the Tower. If the king is gone as they say, at least I can leave London a rich man. Are you game, Jack?’

Cade smiled, looking up at the passage of the moon overhead.

‘I sent Paddy there in the first rush. He’s either dead or in by now. I’ll walk with you, Tom Woodchurch, if you’ll walk with me.’

They laughed like boys then, while Ecclestone looked on sourly at this display of camaraderie. A moment later, Jack began ordering his men back to the streets. His voice was a bass roar that echoed back from the houses of aldermen all around.

Derry was exhausted. He knew he was a dozen years younger than Lord Scales and could only wonder at the source of the man’s manic energy as they reached yet another alleyway and trotted down it in pitch darkness. At least the rain had eased off. They had four men out before and behind, calling warnings or opportunities as they found them. They’d been fighting in the streets for hours and Derry had lost count of the men he’d killed in the black night, small moments of horror and fear while he cut strangers or felt the pain as their knives and clubs got through to him in turn.

He’d bound his leg where some nameless Kentish ploughboy had stuck a spear into it. A spear! Derry could still hardly believe he’d been wounded by something that had decorative ribbons on the shaft. He carried the first few feet of it in his left hand by then, having ripped the last owner from life. A heavy seax was stuck through his belt and Derry wasn’t alone in having picked up weapons from the dead. After so long struggling with strangers in the wind and dark, he was just desperate to see the sun again.

Scales’s men were down to just three dozen from the original eighty. They’d lost only a few at a time before running straight into a couple of hundred looters. Those men had been stinking drunk, which was a blessing as it had slowed them down. Yet that little stand had left almost half Scales’s men dying on their backs in filth and their own blood.

It was all falling apart, Derry could feel it. Cade’s men had reached the heart of the city and whatever rage had brought them in had exploded into a desire to loot, rape and murder while they could. It was something Derry knew well, from battles he’d seen, something about killing and surviving that put a shine in the blood and made a man wild. They might have been an army of Kentish Freemen coming in, but they’d become a savage and terrifying mob. Londoners crouched behind their own doors across the city, whispering prayers that no one would try to get in.

‘East again,’ Scales ordered from up ahead. ‘My scouts say there are fifty or so ahead, by the Cockspur Inn. We can hit them while they’re still bringing out the barrels.’

Derry shook his head to clear it, wishing he had a drink himself. London had more than three hundred taverns and alehouses. He’d already passed a dozen he knew from his youth, buildings shuttered and dark with the owners barricaded inside. Licking dry lips, Derry would have given a gold coin for a pint at that point, especially as he’d thrown away his water flask after seeing it pierced. The thing had probably saved his life, but its loss left him dry as a panting dog.

‘East again,’ he agreed.

Cade seemed to be heading back across the city and, in the condition they were in, all Scales and Derry could do was shadow him from a distance and pick off some of the smaller groups milling around in his wake — preferably the drunken ones, if they had a choice. Derry raised his head. He knew this part of the city. He took his bearings, rubbing his face with both hands to sharpen himself up. They were on Three Needle Street, a haunt from before he’d begun shaving. The livery hall of the Merchant Taylors was close by.

‘Hold there a moment, Lord Scales, if you would be so good,’ Derry called. ‘Let me see if there’s anyone waiting for me.’

Scales gestured irritably and Derry jogged off down the road, his feet squelching to the ankles. He’d been lost without his informants, but with the city heaving with knots of fighting, he’d been unable to find them. He reached the livery house and saw nothing. With a soft curse, he was turning to go back to the group when someone stepped out from a shadowed doorway. Derry jerked his spearhead up in shock at the sound, convinced he was about to be attacked.

‘Master Brewer? Sorry, sir. I wasn’t sure it was you.’

Derry gathered himself, clearing his throat to cover his embarrassment.

‘Who’s that?’ he said, his free hand resting on the hilt of the seax in his belt, just in case. Loyalty was in short supply that night.

‘John Burroughs, sir,’ the shadow replied. Under the eaves of the houses above, there was almost no light.

‘Well? You’ve found me, then,’ Derry snapped. ‘If you ask me for the password, I may just hand you your own entrails. Just tell me what you know.’

‘Right, sir, sorry. I came from the Tower, sir. When I left, they’d broken through the outer gatehouse.’

Derry’s eyes widened unseen in the darkness.

‘Anything else? Have you heard from Jim or the Kellys?’

‘Not since Cade’s lot came in, sir, sorry.’

‘Run back, then. Tell them I’m coming with a thousand men.’

Derry sensed his informant looking sceptically up the street to the ragged group with Lord Scales.

‘I’ll have more by then, don’t doubt it. The queen is in the Tower, Burroughs. Bring anyone else you can find.’

He watched as the man ran off at the best speed he could make through the reeking slop of the street.

‘Christ, Cade, you cunning old sod,’ Derry breathed aloud. He began to run in the opposite direction, to where Lord Scales waited impatiently for news.

‘They’re attacking the Tower, my lord. My man said they were already inside the outer walls.’

Scales looked up at the night sky. The first light of dawn was showing at last. His spirits lifted now that he could finally begin to see the streets around him.

‘Dawn is almost here, thank the Lord. Thank you too, Master Brewer. We’ll leave that group at the Cockspur for someone else. Can you plot a course to the Tower from here?’

‘Easy as winking, my lord. I know these streets.’

‘Then lead us in, Brewer. Stop for nothing. The queen’s safety comes first.’

Paddy looked up at the White Tower, oddly tempted to raise his hand in salute to those within, not that they would have been able to see it. His men had fought the king’s soldiers to a bloody last stand, loping along the tops of the outer walls and taking them one by one or in small groups, offering no quarter. For all their fine swords and mail, he’d had the best part of two thousand charging around inside the fortress, breaking down doors and removing everything worth taking. He knew the best pieces would surely be within the massive walls of the White Tower, but there was just no way to reach them.

It stood unmarked, painted pale and gleaming in the moonlight. The only entrance was on the first floor, with the stairs reduced to kindling by the time he’d broken through the portcullis. It was such a simple thing to baulk his assault. Given a day, Paddy thought he could have put something together, but the soldiers waiting inside the small entrance door could defend it easily and there wasn’t enough time.

He looked around, chewing on his lip. He could see across the inner yard to the massive walls. Dawn was coming and he had a strong sense that he should not be trapped within the complex of towers and walls when it came. As he stood and waited for the sun to rise, he saw two of his men staggering with the weight of an iron-bound chest.

‘What do you have there, lads?’ he called.

‘Coins!’ one of them shouted back. ‘More silver and gold than you would believe!’

Paddy shook his head.

‘It’s too heavy, you daft sod. Fill your pockets, man. Jesus, how far will you get with a chest?’

The man shouted back a curse and Paddy considered going after him to batter some sense into his head, before he mastered his temper. Jack and Woodchurch had been right about the Royal Mint, at least. Even without breaching the White Tower at the centre, they’d found enough gold to live like kings, if they could just get it out of the city. Shining gold coins littered the stones and Paddy picked one up and stared at it as the light improved. He’d never held gold before that night and yet his pockets now bulged with the things. It was a heavy metal, he’d discovered, with a great weight of them resting on his shoulder, in a sack made from a cloak.

He wondered if they could find carts to carry their new wealth back across London Bridge. Yet the light was growing all the time and he feared the day. The king’s men had been cut to pieces all night, but they’d surely come back with a vengeance when they could see the damage done to the city.

One of the men Paddy had placed high on the outer walls raised his arm and shouted. Paddy ran closer to hear, jingling with every step and dreading the news of an army come to relieve the Tower.

‘It’s Cade!’ the man was yelling through cupped hands. ‘Cade!’

Paddy sagged in relief. Better than furious ranks of king’s soldiers, at least. Within the Tower walls, he could not yet see the sun, but it was rising all the same, revealing swirling mists and corpses on all sides. Paddy began to trot to the broken gatehouse to greet his friend. Behind him, the soldiers in the White Tower called insults and threats from the windows. He ignored them all. They might have been untouchable behind walls fifteen feet thick, but that trick with the high door meant they couldn’t come out and bother him, either. He waved cheerfully to them before going out through the gate to the street beyond.

Jack Cade was about dead on his feet after a night spent fighting and walking. His legs and hands were frozen, spattered with filth and blood. He’d crossed the city twice in the darkness and the rising sun revealed how battered and ragged his men had become, as if they’d been through a war instead of just one night in London. It didn’t help that half of them were still drunk, looking blearily at those around them and just trying to stay upright and not vomit. He’d passed furious orders to leave the taverns alone, but most of the damage was already done.

By the time they reached the outer walls of the Tower, Jack was feeling a worm of worry in his gut, as well as his exhaustion. He cheered up when he saw broken chests of new gold and silver coins on the ground, but as his men rushed with raucous cries to grab their share, he could see some had lost or thrown down their weapons. Most of those still with him were too tired and red-eyed to push away a small child, never mind a king’s man. A few hundred fresh soldiers would slaughter the lot of them. He looked up to see Woodchurch wearing the same worried expression.

‘I think we should get back across the river, Jack,’ Thomas said. He was swaying as he stood there, though his son Rowan was as busy as the rest, collecting handfuls of gold and stuffing them about his person.

Jack looked up at the White Tower, hundreds of years old and still standing strong after the night they’d all been through. He sighed to himself, rubbing the bristles on his chin with one hand. London was waking up around them and half the men he’d brought in were either dead or lying in a drunken stupor.

‘We made ’em dance a bit, didn’t we? That was the best night of my life, Tom Woodchurch. I’ve a mind to come back tomorrow and have another one just the same.’

Woodchurch laughed, a dry sound from a throat made sore by shouting. He would have replied, but Paddy came jogging up at that moment, embracing Jack and almost lifting him off his feet. Woodchurch heard the jingle of coins and laughed, seeing how the Irishman bulged all over. He was big enough to carry the weight.

‘It’s good to see you among the living, Jack!’ Paddy said. ‘There’s more gold here than I can believe. I have gathered a share for you, but I’m thinking we should perhaps take ourselves away now, before the king’s men come back with blood in their eyes.’

Jack sighed, satisfaction and disappointment mingling in him in equal measures. It had been a grand night, with some moments of wonder, but he knew better than to push his luck.

‘All right, lads. Pass the word. Head back to the bridge.’

The sun was up by the time Jack’s men were bullied and shoved away from their search for a few last coins at the Tower. Paddy had found a sewer-cleaner’s cart a few streets away, with a stench so strong it made the eyes water. Even so, they’d draped it in an embroidered cloth and piled it high with sacks and chests and anything else that could be lifted. There was no ox to pull it, so a dozen men grasped the shafts with great good humour, heaving it along the roads towards the river.

Hundreds more emerged from every side road they passed, some exulting at the haul or with looted items they still carried, others looking guilty or shame-faced, or just blank with horror at the things they’d seen and done. Still more were carrying jugs of spirits and roaring or singing in twos and threes, still splashed with drying blood.

The people of London had slept little, if at all. As they removed furniture from behind doors and pulled out nails from shutters, they discovered a thousand scenes of destruction, from smashed houses to piles of dead men all over the city. There was no cheering then for Jack Cade’s army of Freemen. With no single voice or signal, the men of the city came out with staffs and blades, gathering in dozens and then hundreds to block the streets leading back into the city. Those of Cade’s men who had not already reached the river were woken by hard wooden clogs or enraged householders battering at them or cutting their throats. They had suffered through a night of terror and there was no mercy to be had.

A few of the drunken Kentish men scrambled up and ran like rabbits before hounds, dragged down by the furious Londoners as they saw more and more of what Cade’s invasion had cost the city. As the sun rose, groups of Cade’s men came together, holding people at bay with swords and axes while they backed away. Some of those groups were trapped with crowds before and behind and were quickly disarmed and bound for hanging, or beaten to death in the sort of wild frenzy they knew from just hours before.

The sense of an enraged city reached even those who’d made it to London Bridge. Jack found himself glancing back over his shoulder at lines of staring Londoners, calling insults and shouting after him. Some of them even beckoned for him to come back and he could only gape at the sheer numbers the city was capable of fielding against him. He did not look at Thomas, though he knew the man would be thinking back to his warning about rape and looting. London had been late to rouse, but the idea of just strolling back in the next night was looking less and less likely.

Jack kept his head high as he walked back across the bridge. Close to the midpoint, he saw the pole with the head and the white-horse shield still bound to it. It was mud-spattered and the sight of it brought a shudder down Jack’s spine as he recalled the mad dash under pouring rain and crossbow bolts the night before. Even so, he stopped and picked it up, handing his axe to Ecclestone at his side. Nearby lay the body of the boy, Jonas, who’d carried it for a time. Jack shook his head in sorrow, feeling exhaustion hit him like a hammer blow.

With a heave, he raised the banner pole. The men around him and on the bridge behind all cheered the sight of it as they marched away from the city and the dark memories they had made.