‘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 yea
rs. 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.
14
Jack Cade stumbled as he tried to dance a jig on the fine lawn. There was no moon and the only light for miles was the house he had set on fire. As he waved his arms, he dropped the jug he was carrying and almost wept when it cracked into two neat pieces and its precious contents drained away. One half of the broken clay contained a mouthful of the fiery spirit and he tipped it up and drank the last of it, never noticing how he cut his lips on the sharp edges.
Leaning back, he roared red-faced up at the windows already reflecting the flames creeping up to the roof.
‘I am a drunken, Kentish man, you Welsh milk-liver! I am everything you said I was the last time you striped my back! I am a violent man and a whoreson! And now I’ve set your house on fire! Come out and see what I have for you! Are you in there, magistrate? Can you see me out here, waiting for you? Is it getting hot, you sheep-bothering craven?’
Jack threw his shard of pottery at the flames and staggered with the effort. Tears were running freely down his face and when two men came running up behind him, he turned with a snarl, his fists bunching and his head dropping from a fighter’s instinct.
The first man to reach him was around the same burly size, with pale, freckled skin and a mass of wild red hair and beard.
‘Easy there, Jack!’ he said, trying to take hold of an arm as it whirled by his head in a great missed blow. ‘It’s Patrick – Paddy. I’m your friend, remember? For Christ’s sake, come away now. You’ll be hanged yourself, if you don’t.’
With a roar, Jack shook him off, turning back to the house.
‘I’ll be here when the craven is forced to come out.’ His voice rose to an almost incoherent bellow. ‘You hear me, you little Welsh prick? I’m out here, waiting for you.’
The third man was thin, all knuckles and elbows, with hollow cheeks and long, bare arms. Robert Ecclestone was as ragged and pale as the other two, with black chemical stains marking the skin of his hands that looked like shifting shadows in the flamelight.
‘You’ve shown him now, Jack,’ Ecclestone said. ‘By God, you’ve shown him well enough. This will burn all night. Paddy’s right, though. You should take yourself away, before the bailiffs come.’
Jack rounded on Ecclestone before he’d finished speaking, taking a bunched hand of his jerkin and lifting him. In response, Ecclestone’s hand blurred, so that a long razor appeared at Jack’s throat. Drunk as he was, the cold touch was enough to hold him still.
‘You’d draw a knife on me, Rob Ecclestone? On your own mate?’
‘You laid hands on me first, Jack. Let me down slow and I’ll make it disappear. We’re friends, Jack. Friends don’t fight.’
Jack unclenched the fist holding him and, good as his word, Ecclestone folded the blade and slid it under his belt behind him. As Jack began to speak again, they all heard the same sound and turned as one to the house. Above the crackle and whoosh of the flames, they could hear the voices of children crying out.
‘Ah shit, Jack. His boys are in there,’ Paddy said, rubbing his jaw. He took a more serious look at the house, seeing how the entire ground floor was in flames. The windows above were still whole, but no one could live who went in.
‘I had a son yesterday,’ Jack growled, his eyes glittering. ‘Before he was hung by Alwyn bloody Judgment. Before the Welsh magistrate, who ain’t even a Kentish man, hung him for practically nothing. If I’d been here, I’d have got him out.’
Paddy shook his head at Robert Ecclestone.
‘Time to go, Rob. Take one of his arms. We’ll have to run now. They’ll come looking tomorrow, if they aren’t on the way here already.’
Ecclestone rubbed his chin.
‘If it were my lads in there, I’d have broken the windows by now and tossed ’em out. Why hasn’t he done that?’
‘Maybe because of the three of us standing here with knives, Rob,’ Paddy replied. ‘Maybe the magistrate would rather they died in the fire than see his little lads cut up; I don’t know. Take an arm now. He won’t come else.’
Once again, Paddy grabbed Jack Cade by the arm and almost fell as the other man wrenched himself away. New tears were running through the soot and muck that covered his skin.
A window exploded above their heads, making them all duck away and cover themselves against flying glass. All three men could see the magistrate, dressed in a grubby sleeping shift with his hair wild. The window was too small to escape, but he pushed his head out.
‘I have three boys here,’ Alwyn Judgment called down to them. ‘They’re innocents. Will you take them if I have them jump to you?’
None of them replied. Paddy looked away to the road, wishing he was already on it and running. Ecclestone watched Jack, who was breathing hard, a great bull of a man with his mind befuddled in drink. He glowered at the sight of his enemy above his head.
‘Why don’t you come down, you Welsh bastard?’ Jack demanded, swaying as he stood there.
‘Because my stairs are on fire, man! Now will you take my boys, in mercy?’
‘They’ll tell the bailiffs, Jack,’ Paddy muttered half under his breath. ‘If those boys live, they’ll see us all hang.’
Jack was almost panting as he stood with his fists clenched in rage.
‘Throw them down!’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll give them more mercy than you showed my son, Alwyn bleeding Judgment.’
‘Your word on it?’
‘You’ll just have to trust a Kentish man, won’t you, you Welsh pisspot.’
Whatever doubts the magistrate may have had were overcome by the torrent of black smoke that was already pouring out of the window around his head. He ducked back into the room and they could hear him coughing.
‘Are you sure, Jack?’ Ecclestone said softly. ‘They’re old
enough to pick us out. Maybe Paddy and me should vanish.’
‘I didn’t know there was bloody kids in there. The man lives alone, I was told, rattling around in that big house while better men have to poach a little just to eat. Men like my lad, my boy Stephen. God, my boy!’
Jack bent right over as a surge of grief hit him. He groaned at his boots and a long tendril of spit laced the grass from his lips. He only looked up when the first frightened child was shoved roughly out above his head, clinging to the broken window and crying.
‘Jump, brat!’ he shouted up. ‘Jack Cade will catch you.’
‘Christ, Jack!’ Paddy swore. ‘Names, man. Stop using your bloody name!’
Above their heads, the little boy leaped out as far as he could, sailing through the air as a moving shadow with the light all behind him. Drunk as he was, Jack Cade caught him easily and set him down on the grass.
‘Wait there,’ Jack said gruffly. ‘Don’t move an inch, or I will rip your bleeding ears off.’
Paddy caught the second boy, smaller than the first. He put him still snivelling by the first and together they all stared up.
The eldest brother cried out in agony as he was forced past the broken glass. The window was almost too small for him and his father was pushing him from inside, leaving skin and blood behind as he blocked the hole. With a lurch, the boy came out, tumbling down with a wail. Jack snatched him from the air as if his weight was nothing at all.
Once again, the three men saw the magistrate’s head appear, looking down with an expression of mingled hope and rage.
‘I thank you, Jack Cade, though you’ll burn in hell for tonight’s work, you drunken ass.’
‘What’s that? What’s that you say to me, you poxed Welsh …’
With a bellow like a dying bullock, Jack rushed towards the house. Both Paddy and Robert Ecclestone reached for him, but he slipped their clutching hands and threw his weight against the door, falling in on top of it. Flame gusted out above his head, driving his friends back. The two men looked at each other, then at the children sitting in wide-eyed misery on the grass.
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