Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘I’ll find you! Find you, insolent whoresons …’

  Rolling on to his back, he slipped into sleep, half aware that he would not know them again. York snored noisily, with a Welsh mountain under him, anchoring him to the earth as the sky turned above.

  It was raining as Margaret’s lords gathered, the downpour hissing on the canvas and making the poles creak with the weight of sodden cloth. Derry Brewer folded his arms, looking across the faces of the queen’s most senior commanders. Henry Percy had lost more than anyone else in that great pavilion. The Earl of Northumberland wore his family on his face, the great blade of the Percy nose marking him out in any group. The price the Percy family had paid gave the young earl a certain gravity among them – in Derry’s eyes, the loss of his father and brother had matured him, so that he rarely spoke without thought and wore his dignity like a cloak around his shoulders. Earl Percy could easily have led them against Warwick, but it was the even less experienced Somerset who had been put in command. Derry allowed himself to glance over at the queen sitting so demurely in the corner, still rose-cheeked and slim. If it was true she had turned to Somerset in the months of her husband’s absence, she had been remarkably discreet about it. Somerset remained unmarried at twenty-five, which was sufficiently rare to raise eyebrows on its own. Derry knew he should counsel the duke to marry some willing heifer and produce fine, fat babies before too many tongues wagged.

  Half a dozen minor barons had gathered at the queen’s summons. It pleased Derry that Lord Clifford had been placed among them on the benches, where they sat like squirming schoolboys called to their lessons. Clifford had killed York’s son at Wakefield and then waved a bloody dagger at the father in spiteful triumph. It would have been hard to like the man after that, even if he’d been a paragon of virtue. As it happened, Derry thought Clifford was both pompous and weak – a hollow fool.

  It was strange how far and fast the story of York’s son being cut down had spread, on its own wings almost, so that Derry’s web of informers had reported being told it many times since. The queen was also coming south with an army of howling, barking northerners, accompanied by painted savages from the Scots mountains. She had apparently taken heads and marked her men with the blood of York, delighting in the destruction of innocent boys. The stories were well planted and Derry could only wonder if there was a mind like his behind them, or if it was just the careless cruelty of rumour and gossip.

  Derry’s clerk had finished reading the long description of Warwick’s forces, culled from a dozen men like Lovelace to build a picture Derry believed was fairly accurate. Positions would change, and certainly the movement of armies could alter an entire battle before it began, but for once he was confident. Warwick had dug in. He could not move again. The spymaster nodded to his man in thanks, waiting to discuss or defend his conclusions.

  It was Baron Clifford who chose to reply, the man’s braying voice enough to make Derry grit his teeth.

  ‘You would have us move the army like pieces on a board, Brewer? Is that how you think war should be fought?’

  Derry noted the ‘us’. For six years, Clifford had been trying to include himself in the ranks of nobles who had lost their fathers – along with Earl Percy of Northumberland and Somerset. Those two seemed to bear no malice towards him, but neither did they show Clifford especial warmth, as far as Derry could see. He had not answered Clifford’s first questions, suspecting they were rhetorical. He decided to let the baron blow himself out.

  ‘Well? Should spies and sneaking cutpurses decide how a royal army takes the field?’ Clifford demanded. ‘I do not believe I have ever heard the like! From what you say, it seems that Warwick is the one who understands honour, even if you do not! You say he has placed himself across the road to London, there to challenge us. Yes! That is how men of honour go to war, Brewer: without sneaking subterfuge, without lies and treacheries. I am appalled at what I have heard here today, I really am.’

  To Derry’s irritation, Margaret kept silent. She had experienced some of the joy and grief of direct command in the far north and she had not found it to her liking. More, he thought Somerset had made some private argument for her to defer to his authority. Somerset was the man he had to persuade, not Clifford, or even Earl Percy, though it would be easier if one of those agreed the course Derry had laid out.

  ‘My lord Clifford,’ Derry began. He could not say the man was a pompous simpleton, though he slowed his words to be understood. ‘With your training and experience, you know battles have been fought where one side manoeuvred before the clash of arms. Fortresses have been taken in the flank before, my lord. That is all I have proposed. My task, my charge, is to provide my lords with all the information they might require.’

  Clifford opened his mouth to speak but Derry went on, forcing an even chillier calm.

  ‘My lord, Warwick has made a fortress of the road to London, with cannon and spiked nets and ditches and ramparts and all the other things the men must overcome to take one step past him. All my reports …’ He paused as Clifford snorted. ‘All my reports say he faces north, my lords. That he has set his spears and cannon to destroy an enemy coming from the north. It is, I suggest, the merest common sense to swing past him and avoid the most vicious part of his defence.’

  ‘And show fear to a smaller force!’ Clifford said in exasperation. ‘To show our fellows that we take the Neville dogs seriously, that we respect traitors and treat them as equals rather than dead wasps to be swept away and burned. By those same reports, Master Brewer, we have five thousand more men in the field! Do you deny it? Ours are the victors against York! We outnumber Warwick’s Kent farmers and London beggars – and you would have us dodge and weave like a boy stealing apples? I say to you all – where is the honour in that?’

  ‘You do have a fine turn of phrase, my lord Clifford,’ Derry replied, his voice and smile growing tighter, ‘but there is a chance here to keep the lives of those men you command – to damage Warwick or even destroy him, without breaking your ranks on the defences he has set up. My lord, I see little honour in …’

  ‘I believe that will do, Master Brewer,’ Somerset murmured, raising his hand. ‘Your argument does not grow stronger by repeating it. I am certain we have understood the main thrust.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Derry said. ‘Thank you.’

  He sat down on a chair that wobbled, wincing as his right knee twinged and threatened to cramp. He was cold, aching and fed up with arguing with fools and younger men who outranked him. He had been so long away from King Henry that the font of his authority had run dry. There had been a time when all men had feared Derry Brewer, for his connections to men of power – and to the fountainhead itself. These days, he had to argue his points with asses like Clifford who needed to have their noses pulled down from where they had been lifted into the air.

  ‘I do not fear Warwick’s army,’ Somerset said.

  ‘Of course not!’ Clifford muttered, silenced by a warning glance.

  ‘It is true that they have had a month or so to prepare a defence, while we marched as slowly south as any group of washerwomen.’ Somerset held up his hand to quell a rising grumble of objection. ‘Peace, gentlemen. I know the men had to be fed, but the result is that Warwick has been given time – and with his wealth, I do not doubt he enjoyed the resources of London. More, he has King Henry and a strange sort of … influence from that. Though the king is a prisoner, I believe we are all aware he will not be crying out or attempting to escape. Yet, despite all such things, they are too small a force of Kentish, London, some Sussex and Essex lads. I do not fear that army – but of course there is another.’

  Somerset looked around at the gathered men, his gaze resting briefly on Margaret, though she did not look up from where her hands lay in her lap.

  ‘York’s son, Edward, shall I call him York now? He who was the Earl of March, who had no more than a few thousand in Wales and still managed to break the forces of three Tudors, killing the fath
er and scattering the sons. Perhaps he has not recruited others to his banners after that victory, though there are angry men all over the country who might walk to him if called. York is a royal house and he could threaten us. If York joins Warwick, they are almost our match – certainly too close in number for any comfort.’ He shook his head. ‘Like Warwick, I might wish for an enemy in front of me, ready to fight and die, but York’s son will surely come against us in time – and he could strike our flank.’

  Somerset paused to take a breath, looking around at them all.

  ‘My lords, my lady, Master Brewer, we cannot dance with Warwick and be caught between them. We cannot let him call the tune. If Master Brewer’s informers have brought news of a fortress with a weak flank, my orders will be to take any advantage we have been offered. I do not see the especial honour of sending thousands of men to die against a well-fortified position, Lord Clifford. Caesar manoeuvred on the field, I believe. In these very fields perhaps, John!’

  Derry saw Clifford smile and dip his head. For some reason, he suddenly could not bear to see the man relaxed in such company. It might have been another aspect of growing older, but he could not let the moment pass.

  ‘If I might explain it to Baron Clifford, my lord, there is a difference between killing a wounded boy as he runs away and attacking a solid defence that has …’

  ‘Brewer! Hold your tongue!’ Somerset snapped at him before Clifford could do more than stare in shock. ‘No, get out! How dare you speak in such a way before me! I will consider your punishment. Out!’

  Derry bowed deeply to Margaret, seething more at himself than anyone in that tent. He found some grim satisfaction that he had given voice to Clifford’s crime. York’s son had been seventeen and no threat to anyone as he tried to run from the field at Sandal. Derry didn’t know if the boy had been wounded, but he’d added the detail to make Clifford all the more the spiteful bully he actually was. That was how stories grew.

  Derry kept his back stiff as he left the tent, knowing he had gone too far. In the colder air, as his anger seeped away, he felt old and weary. Clifford could call him out, though Derry suspected the man would neither lower himself nor take the risk of a duel before witnesses. Derry’s best years were behind him, of a certainty, but he’d still bash Clifford to a brainless pulp if he had the chance, and the man would know it. No, it would be a knife in the dark, or chopped cat whiskers in his food to make him puke blood.

  Derry looked up miserably to the spire of the village chapel, built on land owned by the Stokker family of Wyboston. It was not high enough to protect him from hard men seeking him in the night. He’d just have to stay awake and in company. He did not curse himself for aggravating Clifford or even Somerset. There was an absence of power around Margaret, ever since the death of York. With her chief enemy dead and her husband still in captivity, she had lost some of the fierceness that had driven her for years, almost as if she did not know exactly how to go on. Into that emptiness had stepped men like Somerset, bright and ambitious young fellows, looking far to the future. Weaker sods like Clifford were doing no more than choosing a champion to flatter.

  It was hard not to hope, Derry knew. York was dead, Salisbury with him, after years of having their hands on the throne as if they had a damned right to it. The loss of King Henry was the only itch still to be scratched – one poor innocent held by men with every reason to hate him. The truth was that if Henry had been killed, his queen would not grieve for too long. Derry could see how her eyes brightened when they rested on Somerset. It was hard to miss, if you looked for it.

  4

  Nightfall brought a freezing wind, even colder than the day. Hunched into the icy blast, the queen’s army swung away from the London road. At Somerset’s order, they left the wide, flat stones, cutting west, the men’s boots crunching frosty earth. Scouts waited for them on horses, waving torches to keep them on the right path, close by the town of Dunstable. That had been Derry’s suggestion, to make fifteen thousand men disappear overnight while Warwick’s scouts waited in vain for the first glimpse on the road south.

  In the days since Derry had seen Lord Clifford reduced to red-faced frustration, no one had sidled close or even threatened the spymaster. He had not relaxed his vigil, knowing men like Clifford and their spite rather well. There had been no word from Somerset either, as if the young duke preferred just to ignore and forget any insult he had witnessed. Derry knew if Somerset changed his mind, the result would be something like a public flogging – carried out without embarrassment, in full view of the men. Clifford had neither the authority nor the manhood to arrange such a thing. From him, Derry expected an attack when he was distracted. As a result, without a solid and definite intention, Derry had begun to plan for the man’s quiet disappearance. Yet even for a spymaster, removing a king’s baron from the world was no small task.

  The ranks of marching men woke the terrified inhabitants of Dunstable with a parade of torches and what had already become a weary demand to ‘bring out victuals or livestock’. It wasn’t as if the people of the town had much left by the end of winter. The bulk of their stores had been consumed during the hard months.

  For once, Queen Margaret and her son were there on horseback to oversee the army’s passage through the town. There would be no destruction in her presence, at least under the light of the torches. Derry had no doubt the gleanings would be much poorer as a result. He heard someone begin shrieking in a back street and would have sent a few lads over with cudgels, if Somerset hadn’t reacted first and given the order. A dozen men were brought back to the main road, yelping as they were struck and lashed along. Some raised their voices in complaint, until one of the captains snapped furiously that he could, if he wished, treat them all as deserters. That shut them up like a scold’s bridle. The penalties for desertion were meant to discourage men who might consider it, perhaps over the cold, dark hours of a winter watch. There was much mention of iron and fire in those traditions, learned and recited by men who could not read or write.

  The nights in February were long enough to hide most sins. By the time the army had flooded through Dunstable, all the shops and houses on the main street had been stripped of food. Wailing voices filled the air and the last of the soldiers trudged head down against the wind, weapons clutched in numb hands.

  Outside the town, the darkness became paler. An ancient forest of oak, holly and white birch lay thick there, able to swallow even such a host. In the gloom under its boughs, the men were allowed to rest and eat, knowing that they merely gathered strength to fight. Blades were sharpened and leather oiled. Rotten teeth were pulled by blacksmiths with their pincers of black iron. Serjeants and camp servants simmered cauldrons of onions and stiff threads of venison. For most, the share was little more than a thin, greasy water. They still filled mugs with jealous care, watching every drop and smacking their lips.

  Those who could hunt loped away to seek out grouse and rabbit, foxes or still-hibernating hedgepigs, anything at all. The hunters had been paid for their efforts in the beginning. When there were no more coins, they had continued the work, taking a larger share for themselves instead. There had been one hunter who made a point of keeping everything he snared, once there was no money to pay him. He’d spent a night eating a fine hare over a small fire, watched by many. His body had been found hanging the following morning and no one had even heard a cry. Men died on a long march, that was all there was to it. They fell down or wandered away, blank-faced from hunger or exhaustion. Some were flogged back into line. Others were left where they fell, to breathe their last as the rest marched by and stared without shame at an interesting sight on the road.

  Once the queen’s army had some soup in their bellies, they set off, striking out into a grey dawn, heading towards the horizon as the sun began to rise. They were still strong enough, still hard enough. They had swung right round St Albans in the night, so that they came from the south-west. Some of them showed their teeth as they loped along, imag
ining the surprise and fear in Warwick’s men when they saw an entire ragged army just a-strolling up behind them.

  Sitting high on a fine black gelding, Warwick stared at the road stretching north. The sun was rising into a clear sky, though the wind was chill and blew right through him. The hill and town of St Albans lay at his back, topped over all by the abbey. That thought brought a twinge of irritation as he recalled Abbot Whethamstede in his finery, giving sage advice as one who had witnessed the battle on the hill six years before. As Warwick had played his own vital part in that victory for York, he could hardly understand how the older man thought it was reasonable to lecture him on the details yet again. The abbot had taken up a good portion of the previous evening with grisly descriptions, related with what appeared to be great fondness.

  Warwick shook his head to clear it. His only concern was the queen and the army coming south against him. The wonder was that they had not arrived already. Somehow, Margaret had allowed him time – and he had used it, twisting his rage and grief into ditches and ramparts. There was no road to London any more. His army had dug the land into deep clefts to ruin any cavalry charge against them. Nets of rope studded with spikes had come out of the London foundries, each upright blade twisted into the knots by hand. It was not that no one could breach such defences, but that in doing so they would have the heart torn out of them. Warwick’s plan was to whittle the queen’s larger army down, rank by rank, until the remnant was exhausted and bloody. Only then would he send in his three battles, ten thousand men to break the will and last hopes of Lancaster. He frowned at the thought, considering how little will remained in King Henry himself.

  Henry rested not far away from where Warwick surveyed the great sprawling camp. The king sat in the shade of a bare oak tree, staring upwards through the branches, crossing in patterns above his head. The king seemed entranced. He was no longer tied, but then there was no need.