by Robyn Young
Chapter 39
The galleys came from the south, the great sweeps of their sails reflected in the calm waters of Milford Haven, off the west coast of Wales. It was early August, the mild air full of the cries of gulls and soured by the smell of seaweed that laced the rocks tumbled around the base of the sandstone cliffs. As the galleys anchored in the bay, small boats filled to the gunwales with men made their way to the beach.
As the first ground ashore in the swell of waves, Henry Tudor leapt into the shallows, the water foaming around him. While the others began unloading armour and weapons, ready to send the empty vessel back to the galleys for more, Henry walked up the beach, gulls scattering before him. Behind him, the setting sun had lit the sky in crimson and amber. He had come, on calm seas and fair winds, from the mouth of the Seine to the land of his forefathers, near to the place where he had been born. At last, he had come home.
Falling to his knees in the coarse brown sand, Henry bent and kissed the ground. All the years of waiting – of his fate held in another man’s hands, of high prison towers and patience worn as thin as rags, of a life half lived – were, God willing, at an end. He would seize the destiny his mother had envisioned for him. He would raise again the hope of Lancaster. Let it burn from these Welsh hills.
Behind him, other men were coming ashore, the boats ferrying them across the bay. They brought with them the gear of war: plate armour and helms, war hammers and crossbows, rope, grease, iron shot and black powder. Horses, gifts from the French king, were pulled ashore by squires. Cannon were hauled off the boats, wheels carving the sand. The quiet cove was soon noisy with men, half a dozen different tongues being shouted among them – French and English, Welsh, Scots and Breton.
Rising to his feet, Henry saw others giving thanks to God, touching the ground with hands and lips. Some had been in his company for months, but many had been with him for two years, their gladness and relief at their homecoming tempered by the knowledge of the fight that must now come. There were Sir John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and John Morton with the bishops of Salisbury and Exeter. There, too, Edward Woodville and Jasper Tudor, his blood, who had helped to raise him and had shared his exile all these long years. With them were John Cheyne, standing head and shoulders above most of those around him, James Blount and Thomas Arundel, Christopher Urswick and John Savage. Men of Essex and Surrey, Cornwall and Devon, Pembrokeshire and Monmouthshire. They were joined by one thousand French soldiers and a motley crew of villains released from the gaols of Normandy, their freedom bought with service.
There were two notable gaps in Henry’s company. The first was Thomas Grey. The Marquess of Dorset had deserted some months ago, enticed back to England by his mother. Henry, guessing Richard was putting pressure on the former queen-dowager, had pondered darkly what this might mean for his union with Elizabeth of York. But such fears would, he hoped, be allayed by the other man missing from this company: Harry Vaughan. Henry was angry that Ned Draper had slipped like smoke through his fingers in Paris, but truth be told it mattered little now. With Prince Edward in his custody any reluctance Elizabeth Woodville might show to the marriage agreement could be challenged.
Seeing two men hastening through the dunes on to the beach, Henry recognised the scouts who had been sent on ahead from France. Jasper and Oxford had already hailed them. He quickened his pace to meet them through the men hauling more supplies on to the sand.
Jasper turned as he approached. ‘Our route east is blocked.’
‘By whose force?’ asked Henry sharply, his eyes flicking to the scouts.
‘The Earl of Huntingdon, my lord,’ answered one. ‘He and his men are watching the southern approaches.’
Henry cursed. When his sources informed him that the sea route to London was heavily guarded by Richard’s ships, he had decided to land instead in Wales. Here, Jasper hoped to gather more forces from his old Earldom of Pembroke before marching east into England; Henry’s plan to proclaim himself king before Richard even had the chance to challenge him.
‘Do we march on London as planned?’ asked Oxford, his eyes on Henry. ‘Tackle Huntingdon’s force?’
‘No. If we fight too early we may end up diminished before the true test of our mettle begins. Do you know Richard’s position?’ Henry asked the scouts.
‘He’s said to be in Nottingham, my lord.’
‘How large is his army?’ Jasper wanted to know.
The scouts exchanged a look. One spoke up when the other hesitated. ‘We’ve heard as many as eighteen thousand could flock to his banner.’
Henry felt a chill go through him. He saw his uncle and Oxford, both veteran warriors, blanch at the figure.
‘Eighteen thousand?’ murmured Jasper.
Henry followed his uncle’s gaze to where his own men were still coming ashore. Two thousand at most.
‘I would wager a good number of Richard’s troops will be of Lord Stanley’s colours,’ said Oxford, after a pause. ‘Can you contact your stepfather?’
Henry turned to Jasper. ‘You said we can gather men from Pembrokeshire, that they will answer our call?’
‘If you raise the dragon they will follow it.’
‘Then we keep to the coast and march north. Gather what strength we can. We will strike east when ready. I will attempt to make contact with Lord Stanley. Test his loyalty.’
As the boats continued to ferry the men to shore, Henry summoned the rest of his captains. There on the coarse Welsh sands his banner was lifted above him, the dragon of Cadwaladr and the red roses of Lancaster blazing scarlet in the last of the light.
Dawn was breaking when Richard left his royal pavilion. His banner hung limp in the still air, the white boar, surrounded by white roses, folded in on itself. The iron plates of his armour clinked and flexed as he walked through the dewy grass, taking deep breaths of cool morning air. He had been awake most of the night, starting abruptly from sleep each time he drifted off, dreaming that he was falling.
Sweating and restless in the dark womb of his tent, his mind had wandered through graveyards filled with the men he had killed. There were those who had died nameless and unknown at the cut of his sword in battle and those who had died at his orders, necks carved on the block or squeezed by the gallows’ rope. They came before him one by one, hosts of the dead thronging the stillness, his heartbeat a drum for their coming. Thomas Vaughan and Anthony Rivers, William Hastings, pleading on his knees on the Tower green. His cousin, Buckingham, led to the executioner in Salisbury. In life, he had brought them down, ended their lives with a simple order. Now, in death, he felt them rise again before him. Each ghost an omen. He felt them swarm around him, pressing in on him, clamouring for his soul. Eventually, unable to lie still any longer, he had risen, ordering his attendants to don him in armour.
Tents stretched away as far as he could see, a long range of canvas peaks below the dark ridge of Ambion Hill. Arriving yesterday, after the march from Leicester, his army had made camp on the slope that rose above meadows and crop fields near the village of Market Bosworth. Richard looked out across the shadowed contours of cornfields and the soft darkness of a low-lying plain to where his scouts had told him the enemy was camped, not far away, near the village of Fenny Drayton. Today, after all these months of waiting, he would finally face his foe.
He had heard reports of the standard of the red dragon being lifted north along the coast of Wales; marched into valleys and villages where rebels of old had risen against English kings and memories of Owen Glyndwr still fired the souls of men. When Henry Tudor crossed into Shropshire and began marching down Watling Street, London bound, his army was said to have grown, bolstered in part by the powerful Welshman, Rhys ap Thomas, known as the Raven, who had broken his oath of loyalty to Richard. Even so, Tudor was said to have little more than four thousand beneath his standard. Some of the younger men had laughed at the enemy’s weakness, but the veterans – those who had fought on the fields of war for decades – were slow to glee. They, an
d he, knew how battles could turn. How men striding in with sword and pike raised could soon be routed in terror.
Across the camp a few fires were burning, smoke drifting between the tents, but it was early and many were still sleeping. Some of those awake were breaking their fast with food, but others drank wine, stomachs too tense for anything solid. Richard listened to the low hum of their voices, noticed how some chattered nervously, while others remained quiet, lost to thoughts or prayers. All rose and bowed as they saw him.
As he strode stiffly through their midst, walking off the restlessness in his limbs, he picked out the banners that punctuated the camp, each telling him where his captains were positioned. Such was the vastness of the encampment he couldn’t see them all, but he knew they were there. John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and the earls of Lincoln and Kent, Surrey and Shrewsbury. As well as the high nobility, his childhood friend Francis Lovell among them, there were lords, knights, esquires and gentlemen: Richard Ratcliffe and Lord Zouche, Lord Scrope, Robert Brackenbury of the Tower and William Catesby, in whose custody he had placed Lord Strange, the son of Lord Stanley.
Richard’s eyes drifted in the direction of Thomas Stanley’s camp, where the fields were slowly turning from silver to gold as light spread across the east. The lord was positioned some distance from the main encampment near the village of Stapleton with his younger brother, Sir William Stanley. Richard wanted him closer, but hadn’t yet pressed the issue. Despite his worries, the Stanleys, good as their pledge, had brought six thousand to the fight. When his men had heard Mass and were prepared for battle, then he would summon the lord to take his position or suffer the consequences. The hour had come and all men must show their colours.
‘My lord king!’
Richard saw his cook hastening towards him, tying on his apron as he came.
‘I did not know you had risen. Shall I prepare food for you?’
Richard was about to answer when up on the heights of Ambion Hill a bell began to clang. Men rose, turning in question and alarm. Others scrabbled out of tents in various states of dress, hair matted from sleep. Dogs began to bark and squires hastened to calm horses.
‘My lord?’ called John Howard. The Duke of Norfolk came striding towards the king. ‘Are we to arms?’
Richard stared across the fields. There, in the distance, perhaps a mile or more away, he saw a mass of glittering darkness, as though a river had sprung up upon the plain. He knew at once that it was the breaking dawn glinting off thousands of iron-tipped halberds and the domes of helms.
‘To arms!’ came the cries all around him, as other men saw the approaching host. ‘To arms!’
Turning, Richard half marched, half ran towards his pavilion, all thoughts of breakfast forgotten. He had been planning to ride out in the morning light to meet the enemy.
But it seemed Henry Tudor was coming to him.
Jack crouched on the banks of the Thames looking east along the Strand to where the river made a sudden sweep towards London, as if its grey waters were drawn to it like a needle on a compass. From here, the city was a brooding mass of stocky towers and pinpoint spires, all sharp angles and smoke-smeared darkness against the pallid dawn light now growing beyond it.
Four days ago, when they arrived at the port of London, stepping off the boat from Harfleur, they had found themselves in a city under siege. There had been an outbreak of the deadly sweating sickness, the burning fever of which could kill a person within a day. They had walked its streets, eyes on the piles of bodies wrapped in cloth in the cemeteries, waiting for burial, foul liquids and even fouler odours seeping through the thin shrouds. People were tense, frightened, wearing amulets to protect themselves, buying up potions from quacks and apothecaries, stringing herbs around doors and windows to ward off the plague. Even talk of the war between the king and the bastard, Tudor, who had come to challenge him seemed muted by comparison.
Looking at the city now, coming slowly into focus with the rising dawn, Jack thought of the indifferent killer stalking its streets, intangible and invisible, waiting, perhaps, to sneak out of the gates at curfew’s end and come creeping along the road to Westminster.
‘Here.’
Jack glanced round at the rough voice. As Valentine Holt offered him his wine skin, he shook his head. They had only just started their watch, trading places with Ned and the Foxley brothers who had returned to the inn in Westminster where they had secured lodgings. Despite the fact his strength was returning and his wounds were healing, Amaury’s salves working miracles in his skin, Jack was still weak. The wine would put him in a stupor when he wanted to be clear-headed.
‘Suit yourself,’ said the gunner, taking a draught before replacing the cork.
Two fishermen approached, walking down to the water’s edge and wading into the mud. Jack watched them drag up ropes, feeding them through their hands to pull baskets of eels from the river, the brown bodies sliding over one another in panic as they were drawn from the depths. Turning to look over his shoulder, he scanned the walled gardens of the mansion that rose behind them, one of many that lined the river between Westminster and the city, most of them occupied by bishops and lords.
The building was shrouded by trees, the gardens overgrown. Ivy had run rampant over the walls, creeping across shutters that looked as though they hadn’t been opened in a long time. Part of the roof had caved in, leaving a jagged hole open to the sky through which birds darted in and out. The mansion, taken by the crown on his father’s arrest, had most likely been passed as a prize to one of King Richard’s loyal followers, but whoever now owned it didn’t seem to have paid the possession much attention.
Jack had dreamed of coming here – riding in through these gates at his father’s side. He would have a knighthood. A place in the world. He would be accepted, his blood washed clean. Instead, his father was dead and he had come here to his house to hunt and kill his son.
For three days, he and his comrades had kept watch on the building, cautious and guarded in their cloaks and hoods. All of them were wanted men in England, although the king’s attention was turned firmly on Tudor and there was a notable absence of guards in the city, many men called to war. On the first night’s watch they had been rewarded with signs of life in the building: lights burning faintly behind the shutters on the ground-floor rooms and smoke from one of the chimneys. This had given them hope of occupation, but so far they did not know who – or how many – might be in residence.
The sun was rising now, scattering the Thames with flecks of gold. Boats glided on the current and Jack could see people and horses moving on the road to the city. Business continued, even with the threat of plague. The men had taken their baskets of eels, but others were there now picking through the mud, hunting for whelks and worms for bait. Some time later, when he was shifting his position, trying to ease a cramp in his leg, Jack felt Valentine grasp his shoulder. He turned sharply to see three figures walking down the overgrown path from the house between the tangle of bushes and trees. Pulling up the hood of his cloak, he wandered down to the water’s edge, Valentine at his side.
As they crouched, pretending to be looking for things in the mud, Jack heard the gate creak open. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the three figures heading towards the nearby jetty that jutted into the Thames. As they passed, he watched them from the shadows of his hood. One, the nearest to him, was a brutish-looking man, clad in a leather brigandine. When the man looked downriver, turning his face in their direction, Jack’s heart thumped in recognition.
‘Oars!’ shouted the man, the Welsh accent clear in his gruff voice as he raised his hand to hail one of the boats out on the water.
‘Well?’ murmured Valentine, crouched at his side.
‘It’s them.’ Jack’s voice shook as he spoke. Triumph sang a fierce song inside him. He had led them right.
In Harfleur, finding the fleet had sailed, Jack – believing Tudor w
ould keep the prince out of sight rather than risk taking him into battle – had spent days in the harbour questioning sailors and innkeepers; anyone who might have seen a man fitting Harry Vaughan’s description travelling with a slim, fair-haired youth. Eventually he and the others had been pointed in the direction of a cloth merchant who had sent a shipment to the port of London, on which five men and a boy had paid handsomely for passage. Harry had said his new master had promised to restore his inheritance. Surely the first thing his brother would hope to secure would be the mansion in Westminster?
For Jack, the prospect of revenge was as a feast for a man starved. Amaury had told him Pope Sixtus had died a year ago. The man, Carlo, who had been sent to retrieve the map and had overseen his mother’s murder, was dead. But Harry, the one who had damned her with his words, he was still alive. Today, God willing, Sarah Wynter would have justice.
The boat was approaching, the ferryman pulling on the oars. The three men on the jetty seemed watchful, sticking close together. As it grated against the side, they climbed in. When the ferryman pushed off with his oar, Jack watched the currents of the Thames carry the men away towards the city.
‘Let’s get the others,’ said Valentine, rising and brushing the mud from his hands.
‘No.’ Jack straightened. ‘We don’t know how long they’ll be gone. If Edward is in there this might be our best chance.’
Without waiting for the gunner he strode towards the shuttered mansion, his hand curling around the hilt of his father’s sword.
Chapter 40
The guns roared in the dawn, shattering the stillness. The red fizz of fuses was followed by bright flashes of powder, then the ear-splitting cracks from slender serpentines and the chest-shuddering booms of stocky bombards. The air filled with blue-grey smoke. The cannons, dragged from the Tower of London by Robert Brackenbury’s men, belched their loads at the enemy, pummelling their ranks with lead shot.
