by Robyn Young
Jack entered the lodge behind Michel, greeted by the heat of the fire now blazing in the hearth. He set the candles and rope on the table that he’d constructed out of stacks of sturdy logs and one of the doors from the upstairs’ chambers. When they first arrived in winter, the lodge had been bare – a cold, empty shell waiting for a household to arrive and fill it with furniture, warmth and noise.
At their own enterprise and with the aid of Michel’s sporadic deliveries, he and Edward had made it as comfortable as they could. There was chopped firewood by the hearth, pots and bowls for food, a bucket for water from the nearby stream. A layer of wilted bracken and wildflowers carpeted the floor, and Jack had made two stools from tree trunks. Edward had used charred cinders from the fire to etch pictures on the timber walls. People and animals, landscapes and castles. Even with the crude tools they were good likenesses, leaving Jack to suspect the prince and his father had maybe shared a passion for art too.
Michel had already brought in a pile of supplies to add to the sparse chamber: a basket of arrows, clothing and blankets, sacks of oats, hay for their horses, barrels of salted meat, wine and stockfish, cheese and a new axe. Rather than feeling gratitude for the bounty, Jack’s spirits sank. Clearly, the duchess did not intend for them to come out of hiding any time soon.
‘Does my aunt have news from England?’
The two men turned to see Edward in the doorway.
‘My lord prince,’ greeted Michel. Crossing to the pile, he picked up a model of a carved wooden castle, complete with turrets and doors that opened on tiny hinges. ‘My lady had this made for you.’
Edward stared at the castle, but made no move to take it. ‘Has my aunt spoken to the king? Has my brother been released?’
When Michel hesitated, Jack spoke to the boy. ‘Start preparing the buck, Edward. I’ll help you once the wagon is unloaded.’
Edward stiffened at the suggestion. ‘No. I want to know about my brother.’
‘Edward.’
The youth narrowed his eyes at Jack’s tone, but after a moment he obeyed, turning on his heel and leaving the lodge.
Jack listened to the sound of him hauling the buck across the grass. The prince was at an uneasy age, balanced precariously between boyhood and manhood. In his enforced position as protector he’d had to slip in and out of the roles of father and friend, subject and guardian. He didn’t like to give orders to the prince, but he wanted to hear the truth from Michel and he wasn’t sure the man would speak plainly in front of the boy.
‘What is happening?’ he asked. ‘Has the dowager-duchess been in contact with King Richard?’
‘You must understand,’ began Michel, setting the castle on the floor. ‘There is great uncertainty at present. England has been engaged in a war on the seas with Brittany. Now we hear France has entered the conflict. My lady Margaret believes her brother still has men in Mechelen, watching for sign of the boy. It remains a delicate matter, especially with trouble ongoing between Maximilian and his enemies in Flanders.’
The news shortened Jack’s temper. He wondered if the duchess might be keeping them here more for her own sake than theirs. Might she be hoping somehow to use the prince to Burgundy’s advantage? ‘We’ve been here for months,’ he reminded Michel. ‘How much longer must we wait?’
‘When it is safe, my lady will send word.’
‘And what of his brother?’
Michel shook his head. ‘We do not know.’
Seeing he would get no more of use from the man, Jack helped him unload the rest of the supplies in silence.
When Michel was gone, the wagon trundling away down the narrow track through a tunnel of trees, Jack went to Edward, who was in one of the outbuildings adjoining the lodge.
The prince had hefted up the buck on the rope that was strung over a central beam, the timber marked from years of such use. He had already begun the unmaking, slicing open the creature’s belly, placing buckets for the blood and entrails beneath it. The smell of opened guts tainted the air as he worked, his sleeves pushed high on his thin arms.
‘He’s mine,’ he said shortly, as Jack moved to help. ‘I can do it.’
Jack nodded and leaned against the large block where the animal would later be carved up with cleaver and blade. When Edward entered these moods, it might be days before they spoke again. All the camaraderie built up between them would crumble in an instant and they would be as they were when they first arrived, each angry at the other for putting him here.
Back then it had taken weeks for Jack to coax more than a few words out of the sullen prince. He had tried many times in those early days to get Edward to tell him more about his father; his relationship with Rivers and the earl’s squire, Gregory. Despite his attempts he discovered little at first, Edward opening up just enough to claim he knew nothing of the Trinity sailings – nothing of a stolen map or someone called the Needle, what the caduceus ring meant or what dealings Vaughan had with the House of Medici – before clamming up again.
Jack had been uncertain whether the prince was holding back because he truly knew nothing of these matters, whether he was punishing him for leaving his brother behind in the Tower, or whether he was using his knowledge as some kind of currency to make sure Jack would continue to protect him. He couldn’t really blame the boy if it were the latter after the way he’d been abused by his uncle. But it had left Jack lingering in long periods of silence, where all his unsolved questions and the worry for his friends back in England swirled endlessly in his mind.
Then, one afternoon, about a month after they arrived, when snow laced the sky and they were chopping firewood with cold-stiffened fingers, Edward had begun to speak.
‘They had an argument. My uncle and your father.’
Jack had glanced up, the axe hefted in his hands.
‘You asked what their friendship was like,’ Edward added, lifting his shoulders slightly. ‘I told you they were close, like brothers. And they were. Until that day.’
Not wanting to silence the boy by saying the wrong thing, Jack had continued chopping, his breath pluming in the glacial air.
‘I was in my bed at Ludlow. Their voices woke me.’ Edward paused to roll another log over to Jack. ‘I went to see why they were shouting. The door was open and I was going to go in, but I heard my uncle call Sir Thomas a mad fool and a – a bastard.’ The prince said the word quickly as if it might burn him.
Jack understood. The word was loaded with meaning for both of them.
‘He called him a bastard son of a bitch. Then he struck him.’
Jack swung the axe down, splintering the log in two. ‘Earl Rivers hit my father?’
‘He was yelling that it was evil. The whole . . .’ Edward shook his head, struggling to remember. ‘The whole – something was sinful and evil. He said he would never ally himself with the infidel. That no good Christian would.’
‘The infidel?’ Jack stopped chopping, setting the head of the axe down on the frosty ground. ‘You mean the Turks?’
Edward nodded. He sucked his lip for a moment. ‘Sir Thomas once told me the Turks are not our true enemy. That we – and the Muslims and the Jews – are all fighting for the same thing. Only the world does not yet see it.’ The prince kicked at a shard of wood. ‘If he said this to my uncle I am not surprised he struck him. Sir Anthony fought the Saracens in Portugal, shortly after I was born. I know that he and some of his men were captured there. He never spoke of what happened to him, but I know he returned alone and – so my mother said – wounded in the soul.’ Edward drew in a breath. ‘The next day, after their fight, my uncle came and told me not to trust Sir Thomas. But I couldn’t do that.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘He was like a father to me.’
Jack ignored the sting of the comment. ‘Did they argue again?’
‘Not that I witnessed. But things were not the same between them. They were cordial, but their friendship thereafter seemed destroyed.’
When the boy had fallen silent, Jack had contin
ued steadily chopping the wood, but inside he had been in turmoil, all his questions stirred up by the revelation and more added to them besides. With every new layer that was peeled away he felt his father – the man he thought he knew – diminish.
Thomas Vaughan, the high-ranking courtier and well-respected knight who proclaimed to love his mother, and in whose footsteps Jack had so desperately tried to follow, had become a window through which he could see the shape of someone else entirely: a man of secrets with more enemies than allies, a thief and a liar. Worse yet – if the prince spoke true – a sympathiser of the eastern menace? His father’s footsteps had stopped so abruptly before him, Jack no longer knew the way forward.
‘I miss him.’
Jack looked up, drawn from the memory, as Edward spoke.
The boy glanced round, his hands and arms slick with blood from the deer. ‘I miss my brother.’ His eyes were bright in the slaughterhouse gloom.
Jack crossed to him, pushing up his sleeves. ‘I know.’
As he crouched to help the prince, the sound of birdsong in the darkening woods was all the louder, now the rumble of the wagon wheels had faded.
Chapter 32
‘Row, God damn you! They’re gaining!’
Mark Turner was at the boat’s stern, eyes shielded from the sun as the galley bore down on them, her bowsprit plunging through the indigo waters, throwing up white curtains of spray along her high sides.
Tom was letting out the sail, threading the rope hand over fist. There was a snap as wind filled the canvas. Harry pulled on his oar, his muscles screaming. Sweat stung his eyes and ran down his back, soaking his tunic. He could hear the others behind him, gasping for breath as they heaved the balinger through the water. He cursed as the galley loomed closer, her forecastle towering above them. He could see men on the decks and heard their shouts above the surge of waves striking the prow. They had left the Devon coast two days ago, after hiding in a sheltered cove, watching for signs of pursuit from Plymouth. Now, they were so close to Brittany they could see the golden crescents of its beaches. So close.
‘I see no colours,’ Turner shouted, twisting his head to Tom. ‘Breton pirates?’
But not Lord Scrope and the royal fleet, sent to hunt down fleeing rebels, thought Harry, blinking away the sweat as he rowed. He thought of the letter he’d found in the bag beneath the prow, now stuffed in his pouch with his money. In the safety of the cove, they had searched through the cargo taken with the vessel, cheered by the wine and salt pork, and the bounty of clothes and weapons. He had thought, then, about showing the letter to Turner, but in the end had kept it for himself. Let the others haggle over the booty. The information contained in the letter was far too valuable to share.
‘We’ll not make it,’ said Tom, joining Turner at the stern. He shook his head, glancing from the galley to the Breton coast. ‘We have to surrender.’
Mark Turner swore bitterly. All these months they had evaded capture, surviving the winter on the Cornish moors, stealing food and using animal shelters for refuge. Now, with liberty in sight, they were caught. ‘Stop rowing,’ he said resignedly. ‘Let them come alongside.’
As Tom wrestled with the sail, Harry and the others drew in their oars. The balinger bobbed on the waves, the men now silent save for their ragged breaths. The galley slowed, the man at the helm steering her expertly around. While some of her crew slung grappling hooks from the gunwales to pin the balinger, others aimed crossbows at them. A rope ladder was unfurled.
‘Climb or be shot,’ came a shout in French.
Turner went first, then Rowland Good. Harry followed, gripping on tight to the slippery rungs as the galley pitched and heaved in the water, the balinger bumping and grating against her sides. Near the top, he felt hands grab him under his arms and haul him over. He was faced with a host of unfriendly faces, the crew’s hostility accentuated by a dozen loaded crossbows. He noticed they wore an assortment of clothing and mismatched pieces of armour – arming caps and kettle or sallet helms, quilted gambesons and studded brigandines, some of which were soiled brown with what looked like faded bloodstains.
Lined up on the main deck with his comrades, Harry was relieved of his sword and dagger. He tried to hold on to his pouch, but the crewman took it forcefully from him. Two others had already shinned down the ladder and were searching their vessel.
A burly man with a crop of straw-blond hair and a beard to match stepped out of the crowd, his gaze moving over the nine. ‘Who are you? What is your business in these waters?’
He spoke the langue d’oïl, rather than Breton. But Harry detected an English accent couching the words. His companions glanced uncertainly at one another. Most of them didn’t speak French.
Mark Turner did. ‘We’re merchants,’ he told the burly man. ‘Making our way to Honfleur. We were blown off course.’
‘Merchants? Where’s your cargo then?’
‘We’re going to collect it. French linen, for sale in Bristol,’ added Turner, meeting the man’s gaze.
‘In this shoe of a boat?’ The man threw a dismissive hand towards the balinger. ‘She couldn’t carry fleas from Calais!’
There was a scatter of rough laughter from the rest of the crew.
‘Who are you really? Answer me truthfully, or I’ll give the fish a rare treat.’
‘Sir!’ called one of the men searching the boat. As he climbed the ladder and swung himself neatly over the gunwales, Harry saw he had hold of Turner’s pack. ‘They have this.’
As he pulled out a roll of paper and handed it to his comrade, Harry wondered if Turner had somehow found his secret.
‘A letter of safe conduct,’ murmured the burly man as he read it. ‘From the King of England himself?’
Harry realised Turner had found his own treasure.
The man turned to his crew, holding the letter aloft. He switched into English, the words slipping easily from his tongue. ‘Looks like we got ourselves a fresh haul of spies, lads! Who wants to scale and gut today?’
Harry stepped forward, certain now. These men weren’t Breton pirates or King Richard’s agents. They were exiles like them. He held up his hands as several crossbows swung towards him. ‘We come seeking the court of Henry Tudor. We wish to join him.’
‘To spy on him more like,’ growled the burly man.
‘We stole this boat in Plymouth, from men I believe were in the pay of the king. They were carrying a message for the court of Duke Francis.’
‘What message?’ asked the man, suspicious but curious.
Harry could see from Mark Turner’s expression that he was wanting to know the same. He pointed to the pouch that had been taken from him. ‘I was planning to deliver it personally to Henry Tudor.’
The man opened the pouch and pulled out the crumpled letter. Turner was staring darkly at Harry, but he paid no heed. The squire might have been their self-proclaimed leader during the rebellion, but that didn’t mean he had to remain subservient to the man. Not when he had been given this chance to restore his fortune.
‘I hoped to warn him.’
The burly man ignored Harry, scanning the letter. At once he turned and went to a young man, standing by the gunwales. The man, whom Harry had taken for just another hostile face in the crowd, had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a well-fitted brigandine, the red velvet of which had been bleached by salt and sun.
After reading the letter, the young man approached. ‘You fought the king’s men?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In Kent, with the men of Gravesend,’ Mark said, before Harry could answer. ‘Then at Southampton and Bodmin.’
The man nodded after a pause. ‘I am Sir Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset.’
Harry felt a surge of anticipation. He might not have handed the letter directly to Tudor, but he had managed to pass it to one of his commanders – the son of the former queen no less. Mark Turner inclined his head to the marquess. Harry and the others followed suit.
/>
‘We’ve been hunting Richard’s spies for months,’ Grey told them. ‘Sometimes they slip through our nets. But this – this we would have paid dearly for had we missed it. I thank you.’
‘Are you sure about this, sir?’ asked the burly man, eyes still narrowed at the prisoners.
‘They had plenty of time to destroy it,’ responded Grey, flicking the letter with his hand. ‘Which any spy would have done, rather than risk this falling into our hands.’ His gaze went to Harry. ‘What is your name?’
‘Harry Vaughan, sir.’
‘Vaughan?’ said Thomas, his expression changing.
‘Yes, sir. I am the son of Sir Thomas Vaughan, killed by Richard Plantagenet.’
There were murmurs from the crewmen at this. Chamberlain to the prince, ambassador to King Edward, Vaughan’s name still held weight among these men of York.
Grey handed the letter back to his comrade. ‘Come,’ he said to Harry, motioning him to follow across the undulating deck.
Harry did so cautiously, feeling the questioning gazes of the galley’s crew and his own men upon him as he passed through their midst and followed Thomas Grey into the shade of the cabin beneath the forecastle.
Grey turned to him once they were alone, eyes alight. ‘James Wynter – have you heard from him?’
‘Who?’
‘Your brother,’ said Grey, frowning. ‘Sir Thomas Vaughan’s other son.’
Harry felt a jolt go through him.
‘I know he was involved in an attempt to rescue my brothers from the Tower,’ Grey continued, not seeming to see his shock. ‘I have heard nothing since then, only rumours they are dead. Do you know more? Are you in contact with him?’
Harry’s mind reeled. ‘That bastard is not my brother!’ The words came in a rush. It was the only thing he managed to say before the burly man appeared in the doorway.
