by Robyn Young
There was a knock at the door. The steward opened it and another servant peered in. ‘My lord, your men have returned, with their’ – he glanced at Henry – ‘companions.’
The duke nodded to Henry. ‘Go. See how many they have raised for the fight. We will talk again later.’
As he left the chamber, Henry noticed Pierre’s eyes following him out. When the door closed behind him, he released a slow breath. Following the servant through the cloisters, where ivy clinging stubbornly to the walls shivered in the wind, he realised his whole body was taut. With the prospect of freedom so close he could almost touch it, his position felt more precarious than ever.
Twelve years now, he had been locked in this land. He had spent almost half his life in Brittany, but it had never been home. He had lived at the mercy of another man’s whim, moved like a pawn in a game of power played by Edward, Louis and Francis, the possibility of abduction or extradition a constant threat. Guards storming into his chamber in the dead of night to hasten him to another turreted castle, away from suspected kidnappers from England or France, had been a recurrence that had left him ever restless, wakeful.
The greatest threat had come when the signing of the treaty between England and France had safeguarded Brittany, and he had been the price for King Edward’s support. When the ship had arrived to take him into Edward’s custody in England, Francis, remorseful but firm, had sent him on his way. In desperation, knowing he could well share the fate of his namesake, King Henry VI, in the secrecy of the Tower, he had feigned illness and the duke, struggling with his conscience, had relented, bringing him back into the safety of his court. Thereafter, Francis had treated him more like a son than a prisoner, taking him on hunts and playing him at chess and tennis, giving him rich clothes and gifts of hawks, provisioning his table with the best foods and wines. But, for all these luxuries, Brittany remained his prison and Francis the keeper of his destiny.
The servant led Henry out through the orchards, where lay workers fought against the whipping wind as they plucked the last of the apples from the trees, later to be pressed into cider. The men called to one another as they worked, speaking Breton, rather than French. The roses that had been in bloom just last week were dying, petals withered by cold and rain. Henry held his cap on his hair as the breeze threatened to snatch it from his head. His black robe and sable-trimmed cloak swirled about him as he followed the servant to the yard. A company of the duke’s men had just arrived, the iron-shod hooves of their horses ringing on the hard ground. Among them, Henry saw his uncle.
Jasper Tudor stood head and shoulders above the others in the company, a strapping man with chestnut hair shot through with grey. Sons of a Welsh squire and a widowed Queen of England, Jasper and his brother, Edmund, had been half-brothers of Henry VI. Fond of them both despite the fact that they had been born in scandal, the king had granted them the earldoms of Pembroke and Richmond. But the brothers’ fortunes had waned with the outbreak of war and the rising of Edward of York. After the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury, Jasper had shared his exile in Brittany, but he had been a rebel long before they fled England. It was in his blood, his men said.
‘Harry,’ Jasper called, seeing him approach. He handed the reins of his mud-spattered horse to a groom and strode to meet him, pulling off his gloves.
Henry smiled. There was no one else who called him that. He greeted his uncle with a brusque embrace. ‘How did you fare?’
‘Another hundred have answered the duke’s summons,’ replied Jasper, glancing behind him to where the duke’s men were unbridling their mounts. ‘Not just farmhands and fishermen. Hardy men with weapons of worth. They will meet us at Paimpol in four days.’
‘We sail in six,’ Henry reminded him.
Jasper gripped his nephew’s shoulder. ‘Have no fear. We will be ready.’
Henry noted the steel in his uncle’s eyes, the tight set of his jaw. Sometimes, looking at Jasper, he wondered if the man had any resemblance to his brother. Was he perhaps staring into the face of his father, dead before he was born? Edmund Tudor. He had his name and his blood, but if there was anything else he shared with the man whose seed had given him life, Henry knew it not. His father remained a thing of mystery, seldom spoken of, a phantom in his bloodline. Over the years, he had studied Jasper for some sign of recognition; something that might tell him more of his heritage, but all his own features seemed so disappointingly different to his uncle’s. People had always told him he looked like his mother.
Over Jasper’s shoulder, Henry saw another figure emerge from the company of horsemen. It was Edward Woodville, former admiral of the English fleet, brother of Earl Rivers and Elizabeth Woodville, and uncle to Prince Edward. The captain had come seeking sanctuary in Brittany after Richard set a price on his head. His two war galleys were now anchored with the others in Paimpol’s harbour, their holds being filled with weapons and supplies. Woodville had thrown himself willingly into their preparations for war, eager to return home and face the king who had shattered his family.
Henry greeted him courteously.
‘How is the duke?’ Woodville asked him. Removing his cap, he pushed a hand through his auburn hair.
‘No worse.’ Henry kept his voice low, but the clop of hooves and calls of the grooms covered his words from any of Francis’s men. ‘But we must not delay.’
‘He still believes my nephews are dead?’
‘Yes. I have his full support.’
Edward Woodville nodded. ‘It is well we are leaving soon. If the truth comes out our war will be sunk before it has begun.’ His eyes lingered for a moment on Henry’s, searching, but he must have been assured by what he saw there, for he placed a firm hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘When our enemy is crushed into dust and my nephew is restored to the place his father and God intended for him, we will celebrate our victory together when you are wedded to my niece.’ He smiled. ‘I can assure you Princess Elizabeth is worth the launching of a thousand ships.’ Woodville turned as his squire called to him. With a nod to Jasper and a last glance at Henry, the captain headed back across the yard.
Meeting Jasper’s gaze, Henry walked away from the company, leading his uncle up a grassy slope that looked over the salt marshes to the grey rolling sea. ‘Pierre Landais is here.’
Jasper cursed, but shook his head. ‘The duke has proven he will not listen to his concerns. The men have been raised, the ships commandeered. Not even Landais and his misgivings can stop this now.’
Henry said nothing. He wished he shared his uncle’s confidence, but he could feel the sword of fate hanging low over his head; so few threads to hold it in place and each gossamer thin. He had waited many years for this. His time in Brittany had been long, but his life as an exile stretched back even further than that.
At the age of four, when the fist of war first came crashing into his life, Henry had been taken from his mother in the wake of the Lancastrian’s bloody defeat at Towton. His wardship granted to an ally of the victorious, new-crowned king, Edward IV, he was raised as well as any noble young man could hope to be and even allowed occasional visits from his mother, but a hostage he remained: a tool to be used in the affairs of others. When his master was killed during the rising of the Earl of Warwick and Lancastrian hopes had risen once more with King Henry’s restoration, Jasper Tudor had come for him. But less than a year later, all hope had been destroyed at Tewkesbury, with Henry and his uncle fleeing for their lives, fate and storms washing them on Brittany’s shores and into the arms of another gaoler. To Henry it seemed as if God had made the whole world a cage for him.
‘We may have the men of the south. But what of the north?’ Henry looked at his uncle. ‘Do you think Lord Stanley will fight with us? Or against us?’
‘This I do not know,’ admitted Jasper. ‘The man has always been harder to read than a Turk’s prayer book. But if anyone can persuade him it will be Lady Margaret.’
Henry thought of his mother, the woman he was supposed t
o take after. The memory of her face had become clouded with time, but he remembered the last thing she had said to him, as she had bade him from England’s shores, as clearly as if she were speaking it now.
Have no fear, my son. Fortune’s wheel will raise you up again.
The messenger who had crossed the sea to tell him of Buckingham’s rebellion had come with a reminder of those words. The path was clear. The wheel would turn.
Henry looked north across the restless waters, surging beneath the glowering sky. He imagined those waters lifting him up, bearing him home. The game in which he had been moved around ceaselessly by other men had ended; the board left scattered by the deaths of its players, the game unfinished. Now, he, their pawn, would inch his way alone through the fallen pieces to take a king.
Amelot knelt on the cold floor, twisting her hands this way and that, gritting her teeth as the skin of her wrists was grazed to bloody ribbons by the ropes. Her throat was so tight she could barely swallow and a needle of pain was threaded deep in her head. She could feel beads of sweat breaking on her forehead to trickle down her cheeks like tears.
Yesterday, or at least she thought it was yesterday – the days now bleeding into one another – the masked giant had fed her properly for the first time in weeks. She was so weak from living on stale bread and briny water that he’d had to cradle her like a baby, holding her head with one massive hand while the other spooned hot broth into her mouth. He had also given her what she took to be some sort of medicine, in the form of a foul sticky pellet that he forced down her throat until she gagged. He had pressed his calloused palm over her mouth and pinched her nose to make her swallow it.
There had been no questions, no threatening tones, no carefully administered pain. She had felt her heart thud into pounding life when he had untied the ropes, but he merely pulled a tunic on over her head before binding her bonds again. It was only when he had gone and she was sticking her fingers down her throat to vomit up his medicine that she discovered the ropes were not quite as tight as they had been.
All last night, the bells of the cathedral thundering the hours, the unfamiliar unpleasantness of a man’s sweat seeping from the oversized tunic he’d dressed her in, she had strained and wriggled to loosen them further. Now, she was almost free.
Amelot froze, hearing a creak in the passage outside. She stared at the door, her breath in her throat. Was he coming? The monster in the mask, whose secrets she now knew? Hours she had spent, staring into that peeled horror of a face with a furrowed slit where an eye should be and a nub of gristle for an ear. The giant’s wounds were nothing like she had seen on soldiers – the brutal hack of a sword or the shattering power of a gun. This had been done deftly, with precision, someone slowly removing all the skin from that half of his face, right down to the lips. Those raw lips, speaking sometimes in French, but mostly in a language she did not understand, had questioned her for hours at a time, while his hands had choked and hurt her. She had given him whimpers and screams, each sound torn from her. But no words. She had none to give. Those had been taken a long time ago by another.
Hearing nothing further from beyond the door, Amelot continued her struggle. Straining with the effort, she managed to pull one hand out of the knotted loop. Not allowing herself any moment of victory, she set to work on the other. Blood, trickling down her thin wrists, helped to lubricate her flesh and, after a time, she wrenched this hand free. Unbound, moving swiftly, but carefully, her bare feet and hands soft on the boards, she made it to the window. As she opened the shutters, she threw her hand up over her face. The sky was leaden, but it was more daylight than she’d seen in weeks and even its dullness hurt her eyes. Blinking, she peered out across a large lawn towards the walls of the cathedral. She was, she realised with some surprise, inside its grounds.
The grass below, carpeted with brown leaves, was too far for her to jump. Looking up, she studied the overhanging eaves, then slipped out on to the sill. She held on tight, feeling herself sway. The prospect of escape was pumping the blood hot through her veins, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before that subsided and the fever working its will inside her won out. She had to get away now. While she still could.
She pulled herself up, her muscles singing in pain, and clambered on to the wet roof. Climbing up the tiles, the tunic buffeting about her in the chill wind, she saw the building dropped down on the other side into a narrow street. There were people moving along it, hoods up against the drizzle. A maze of rooftops stretched east, the channels between them showing her the pattern of London’s streets. She knew the widest of them was Cheapside, which led to Lombard Street and the house on Birchin Lane, but she had no interest in that place of death. Instead, she looked north and east from Cheapside, to where a slender white bell tower rose.
Scrabbling her way along the rooftop, the cold driving brutal life into her numb body, Amelot clambered down to a balcony, then jumped. Ignoring the cries of surprise as she dropped into the street, she picked herself up and began to run, bare feet splashing through puddles. Out into Cheapside, slipping through the crowds, she was forced to halt by a column of men riding down the thoroughfare, the hooves of their destriers churning up mud. The men were dressed for war. More came behind them, these ones marching, pikes and halberds cushioned against their armoured shoulders, like a forest of iron-barbed trees. Amelot waited, shivering in the crowds, until the last of the soldiers had passed. Following in their wake, keeping close to the shelter of the buildings, she headed north towards the bell tower.
Chapter 24
The storm came on the Feast of St Luke, riding in from the west on a black chariot of clouds. The winds were the vanguard, whipping up waves far out in the Atlantic and sending them rushing headlong towards Cornwall and Devon. All along the coasts, fishermen struggled to weight down nets and baskets, hauling boats high on to the sands while gulls wheeled and screamed above them in the seething skies. Tile and thatch were ripped from roofs, trees uprooted. The sea roared as it rolled in, surging over harbour walls and into streets and houses, dragging out boats and spitting them back as splinters.
The rains followed, sweeping down through the mountains of Wales, swelling the rivers and streams that tumbled into England. The Wye, the Tern and the Stour all rose to meet in the Severn, which poured its great torrent through Shrewsbury and Worcester, a wall of water gathering strength and speed as it headed for Gloucester. Here, it met with the tidal surge of the estuary and the clash of river and sea burst the banks, the waters flooding fields and rushing into valleys.
First livestock were caught up in the deluge, then people. Houses, farmsteads, whole villages, were swept away in the relentless rush of water. More than two hundred souls were drowned. People lamented, praying to God to save them from the worst storm in living memory. And still the rain continued to fall, day after day, no sign of surrender.
In the heart of the tempest, Sir Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, left the mountain ramparts of the Brecon Beacons and struggled east towards England at the head of his army. Palfreys bearing armoured men and hobbies burdened with packs staggered along swamped roads. Oxen lowered their massive heads, straining to pull wagons through the mire. Men bent their chests into the wind as they marched, armour and sodden clothes dragging at exhausted muscles. At night, around cheerless fires that gave more smoke than flame, they huddled mostly in silence, listening to the ceaseless roaring of the wind. Food soaked by rainwater spoiled quickly and rations were depleted. Hearts and minds set on vanquishing King Richard turned inward to blisters and growing hunger.
Fallen trees, high rivers and treacherous mud were the first obstacles they faced. Then, the bridges. When they found the first crossing over the Severn destroyed, its broken piers and timbers sagging in the torrent, Buckingham and his commanders thought it the work of the storm, but when they sent scouts north to hunt for the next bridge they found all the crossings had been damaged beyond repair. That was when they knew their treachery had been discov
ered.
As he was floundering, searching for a way to cross the rapidly flooding Severn, Buckingham began to receive scattered reports. The men of Kent had risen early it was said, drawing John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, to confront them. There, the rebellion was rumoured to have been quashed before it had even begun. Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, had fled the sanctuary of Westminster in disguise to lead the men of Devon and Cornwall, but many found their routes blocked by the floods now inundating England. Buckingham had men on the coasts watching the raging seas for Henry Tudor, but so far no ships had been sighted. Meanwhile, the king was said to have raised a mighty force in the Midlands and was marching south to confront the rebels. Hearing this, men, already demoralised, began to desert.
For Buckingham, it had been struggle enough to raise the force he had, his unpopularity among his tenants in Wales and the proud Marcher lords, whose authority had been eclipsed by his own rising star, hampering his efforts. Bishop John Morton, released from custody to become his right-hand man in this campaign, had advised him to leave Brecon last week. Buckingham had refused, wanting to muster as many men as possible. His army in the end had been impressive, but he had left it too late to lead them. But if the way forward seemed hopeless, to turn back was impossible. Along with the confused reports had come the clear message that there was now a reward on his head for a thousand pounds.
And so the duke and his flagging army struggled on, his banner raised before him bearing the white swan with a golden crown on a chain around its neck, the waters of the Severn rising all around until it was as if the land had turned to sea.
They followed the girl and the old man down Gracechurch Street in the driving rain. The streams of Londoners hurrying about their business, fighting the wind and the black mud churned up by the companies of armed men riding out of the city over the past weeks, helped shield them from sight. But their quarry seemed more focused on getting wherever they were going than what was behind them and, other than to check for wagons or horses when they crossed the street, they rarely looked back. This, along with the couple’s slow progress – the girl, head bent, huddled in close to the old man who walked with the aid of a stick – had made it easy for them to be tracked from the French vintner’s on Bishopsgate that lay in the shadow of the bell tower of St Helen’s Priory.
