Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  It would mean the local poachers emptied his forests of deer and grouse, of course, but there was no help for that. With the country so close to complete insurrection and chaos, he could not let the news creep out that King Edward was there, held prisoner.

  The guards on the high walkways stared down without expression as he showed them the signal. A tabard on a lance was clear enough and Warwick stopped waving it when his arms began to ache, waiting for the crossbowmen to call a serjeant. It was a serious decision to open the main gate while under siege orders. Warwick waited as the rain increased and began to drive across him. His horse shivered, the great neck and flanks rippling in response to the cold. By the time the first crack of light showed within, he was blue-lipped and he barely nodded to the guards as they recognized him and stood back. The doors were closed and barred behind him, the iron portcullis rattling down into holes with a clang. He shook rain from his face and hair as he walked his horse on a long rein through the killing path. It was only forty paces or so, but he was overlooked by ledges and walkways that could have been filled with archers. As he reached the end of it, he closed his eyes for an instant, breathing in the smell of damp stone and cold. The castle was cut off once again. With the river running by, they had a never-ending supply of clean water and enough salt meat and grain to make bread for years. The world, with all its troubles and grief, had become a place outside those walls.

  Warwick felt himself relax. He handed his horse over to a lad and walked through the inner gate to the great courtyard. He could not help the way his eyes looked up to the tower where Edward had his cell. Warwick was aware of the castle steward droning on about some part of the estate or the rents. He did not trouble to listen, looking instead at where he would go. The steward dried up as Warwick thanked him, his attention clearly elsewhere. The man fell behind as Warwick crossed the huge inner yard, surrounded by windows of the great house beginning to gleam gold as lamps were lit to welcome the master home. As he went, he patted the satchel he wore over one shoulder, feeling the heft of the papers within.

  Edward had not changed in any particular way over the summer of his captivity. Warwick had heard he spent hours every day throwing himself around the room and lifting chairs and his bed, or pushing himself up and down in odd positions. They had refused him a sword, even a blunt training weapon, for fear of what he would do with it. Edward had also been denied a razor and as a result he had grown a great black beard that made him look like a wild hermit.

  As he was still in his twenties, at least the king’s fitness would not have suffered too badly, Warwick thought with a twinge of envy. He could smell Edward’s sweat as he entered the room, a rank odour that was musky and not completely unpleasant, like urine on a dog’s paws.

  Edward had on the same shirt he’d worn at his capture, though Warwick could see it had been cleaned and even had a seam resewn. The steward and the staff had no cause to mistreat him and would have been fools if they had.

  Without a word, Warwick gestured to a large stuffed chair, sensing a difficult meeting might go a little better if Edward was not allowed to loom over him. The king enjoyed being taller than other men. He always had.

  With a curl of his lip, Edward dropped into the seat. There was nothing relaxed about him. Every muscle was tensed and he looked ready to leap up at the slightest provocation.

  ‘Now why would you be here, now?’ Edward said. Warwick opened his mouth, but the king went on before he could reply. ‘You can be told I am well in a note, by pigeon or rider. No, you are here now for one of two choices.’

  Edward had leaned forward as he spoke, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. Warwick was aware of the threat in the younger man. He rose to his feet and put his own seat between them, and nothing about the action was unconscious. Edward’s eyes were coldly assessing, a man near the end of his patience. Perhaps it was the odour of perspiration, but Warwick felt as if he was the one being stalked. He glanced back at the two guards who waited, watching the prisoner for the first sign that he might attack. They had good solid maces of iron to bring down on Edward’s head and shoulders. Warwick made a show of stretching his back and sat himself down once again, facing the young giant who made his chair look small against the frame.

  Edward smiled at him infuriatingly, reading the nervousness.

  ‘Not to kill me, then, or you would have given the order to my guards.’

  His gaze dropped to the satchel Warwick wore, the brown leather scuffed and shiny from long use. Edward’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘What do you have in there, Richard?’

  ‘In all the time I have known you, I have not seen you break your oath. You remember when we talked about it? Before Westminster, when you asked me what they wanted from a king? I said he would be a man who kept his word.’

  ‘Not you, then,’ Edward murmured. ‘You broke your oath to me. You may have damned your soul, Richard, and for what?’

  ‘If I could take back what I have done, I would. You have my word, if it is worth anything at all.’

  Edward was surprised by the intensity in the man across from him. He stared, then nodded.

  ‘I believe you mean what you say. Ask me for forgiveness, Earl Warwick. Who knows, it could be granted to you.’

  ‘I will ask,’ Warwick replied.

  He felt like a supplicant, rather than the one demanding terms. There was something powerful in the presence of the king, as if he had been born to wear the crown. Warwick felt it as a tide and he wanted to kneel. The fate of his brothers held him steady, anchoring him.

  ‘I will ask you for an amnesty and a pardon, for all crimes, all sins, all broken oaths. For me and for my family. I trust your word, Edward. I have known you since you were thirteen years old and wrestling with Calais soldiers. I have never known you to break an oath, and I will accept your seal on the papers my scribes have written.’

  Without looking away from Edward, Warwick reached into the satchel and fumbled for the silver halves of the king’s Great Seal. Edward looked down as he heard them chink together.

  ‘A pardon for holding me prisoner,’ Edward said. ‘For breaking your oath to me. For your brothers George and John Neville, in breaking their oaths.’

  Warwick coloured. The wound could be cleaned, if they forced a heated blade to the root of it and let out all the poison.

  ‘For all, Your Majesty. For all past mistakes and sins and errors.’ Warwick took a deep breath in through his nose. ‘For all the deaths of loyal men. For the execution of Earl Rivers and Sir John Woodville. For the marriage of your brother George, Duke of Clarence, to my daughter Isabel. Amnesty for everything, my lord. I would take almost all of it back if I could, but I cannot. Instead, I must make it the price of your freedom.’

  Edward’s gaze had narrowed and the sense of danger came off him like heat.

  ‘You would have me pardon the men who killed my wife’s father?’

  ‘You are the king, Edward. I have told you what must be. I cannot take back one word of it. If I could return to the morning at Towton when we found the bridge cut down, before the snow began to fall, I would. And I would stand with you again. I ask your forgiveness now, for me, and for my family.’

  ‘And if I will not, you will leave me here,’ Edward said.

  Warwick flushed under his scrutiny.

  ‘I must have your seal and your name on the pardons and the amnesties, Your Highness. There is no other way. For you see, I know you will honour them, even though they are the price of your freedom. Even though your wife will rage when she hears you have granted pardons to men she has hated since she arrived at court.’

  ‘Do not speak of my wife,’ Edward said suddenly, his voice grown deep and hard.

  Warwick inclined his head.

  ‘Very well. I have ink and wax. I have a quill and your seal. I ask for your pardon.’

  Warwick handed over the satchel with its contents, feeling a touch of shame at the tremble he saw in Edward’s hand, the young man stil
l hardly daring to believe he would be released and not killed. Warwick prepared himself to remain still, almost holding his breath. He saw Edward unwrap the sheaf of vellum sheets, reaching into the satchel and seeking the quill and the metal bottle of black squid ink. Without reading them, Edward scrawled ‘Edward Plantagenet Rex’ on each page, then tossed the quill over his shoulder.

  ‘You have my seal. Finish the rest of it yourself.’ He rose with Warwick and passed the papers into his arms.

  ‘There. You have what you wanted. Shall we see now if you are able to redeem any part of your honour, of your word? Will I be allowed to leave this castle?’

  Warwick swallowed. He was desperately afraid he had loosed his own destruction on the world. It troubled him terribly that Edward had not read the pages he had signed. The king had forced the test of his honour, finding by instinct the very crux of it all. Did it matter how well Warwick had worded the documents to be signed and sealed? What mattered most was Edward’s word. Warwick could only gesture to the guards, so that they stood back from the door. For the first time in seven months, it lay open.

  Edward crossed the room in three quick strides, his speed making the guards tense and exchange glances. In the doorway, the king hesitated, looking down on dark steps descending away.

  ‘I think you should walk down with me, Richard, don’t you? I don’t want your guards to put a bolt through my chest in an accident. I would prefer a horse, though I will walk if I must.’

  ‘Of course,’ Warwick said, suddenly so weary he could barely think at all. God knew, he had made mistakes before. Edward had forced him to understand that it came down to trust. He crossed to the stairs and Edward turned to him.

  ‘I think, after this, I will not summon you to court, Richard. Though I will be bound by the amnesties and pardons, I cannot say we are friends, not now. I think it would be safest for you if you do not cross my wife’s path for a time either. Where does she lay her head now? I would see her again, with my children.’

  Warwick bowed his head and felt both shame and loss.

  ‘In the White Tower, I swear by her own choice. There has been no ill treatment. I have not seen sight nor sound of her for months.’

  Edward nodded, his brows drawn down over a glower.

  Warwick accompanied the king to the stables, where the horse master selected a fine broad-chested gelding to carry the king. Warwick offered Edward a cloak, but he refused it in his impatience to leave the place of his confinement.

  In darkness, the great gates opened once more and King Edward cantered out, back straight, into the night.

  The rider was filthy with road dust, his beard thick with it. The grime lined every seam of his face and clothes, though he wore no cloak and his arms were black to the elbow like a smith’s. The sheer size of him made people wonder and stare as he passed. Not one in a thousand had seen the king in person, when Edward had stood on the steps of Westminster Hall and summoned them to march north. He had been resplendent then in a cloak and cloth marked in gold. He had been shaved cleanly and his hair had been shorter, not the straggling mass of dirt and knots this rider had tied back with a strip of cloth torn from his jerkin.

  Edward rode the gelding at a slow walk, the animal’s head drooping along with its master. The evenings were long then and the light was fair as, one by one, men and women stepped out into the street behind him, wondering in whispers, asking out loud, daring to believe it.

  A young monk ran up alongside the weary rider, resting a hand on the thick mud clotted on to the stirrup. He stared up, panting and jogging along, straining to see through the beard and the filth.

  ‘Are you the king?’ he asked.

  Edward opened one eye and stared at him.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I have come home.’

  The monk fell back at his words, standing with an open mouth in the road until he was surrounded by a crowd.

  ‘What did he say, then? Is it King Edward?’

  ‘Who else could it be? The size of him!’

  The monk nodded, an incredulous smile pulling one side of his mouth.

  ‘It is him. King Edward. He said he had come home.’

  They roared at that, raising their hands into the air. As one, the Londoners began to race after the lone rider still making his way towards the Tower, gathering more and more from every street and shop and house they passed. By the time Edward reached the gatehouse of the Tower of London, a thousand of his subjects stood at his back, with still more flooding in behind. Some of them even carried weapons, ready to be commanded in anything.

  Edward knew he had ridden fast enough to outpace any messenger. He had driven his horse to lame exhaustion. As a result, he was not certain whether the guards at the gatehouse would have been told of his freedom. He set his jaw. He was the king and his people stood at his back. It would not matter what they had been told. Summoning his confidence, he strode forward and thumped his fist on the wood, then waited with the sense of eyes crawling over him.

  ‘Who is it down there?’ a voice called.

  ‘King Edward of England and Wales and France, Lord of Ireland, Earl of March, Duke of York. Open this gate.’

  Edward saw flickers of movement as men leaned over the high wall. He did not look up and merely waited impassively. Bolts and chains began to sound on the other side, then the rattle of an iron lattice being raised. Edward looked back to the sea of faces waiting around him.

  ‘I was held, but now I am free. It was your loyalty that freed me. Take heart from that.’

  As soon as there was enough room under the rising spikes, Edward ducked under it, pulling away from the trailing touches of the crowd on his back. He strode across the stone yard within, towards the White Tower and his wife, Elizabeth.

  33

  Edward watched his children play, his oldest daughter waving a piece of apple out of reach of another. Elizabeth’s two boys by her first marriage were competing to carry the girls through half a dozen rooms at Windsor, charging in and out of open doors with hoots like hunting calls. Edward felt no particular affection for the boys. He had appointed swordmasters and tutors to instruct them, of course, so they would not embarrass him. After that, he took no more interest than he would in the get of any other stranger.

  As for his three girls, Edward had discovered he adored them when they were not actually in his presence, as if the idea of them was somehow more of a joy than the reality of their shrieks and constant demands on his attention. He loved them best in their absence.

  Elizabeth looked sidelong at her husband, smiling as she read his thoughts about as easily as her own. As soon as Edward began to frown, she shooed all the whooping, neighing children out of his presence, closing a door on their noise.

  As the clamour died away, Edward blinked in relief, looking up and understanding when he caught her smile. Elizabeth was solicitous in her care of him, though not in a way that made him weak, or so he hoped. Edward smiled back at the thought, though her own expression had grown serious. As he looked at her, she bit her lower lip, halfway along its length.

  ‘I have not troubled you with this, just as you asked,’ she said. ‘Not for a month now.’

  He groaned at the words, understanding on the instant. Though his wife claimed to have remained silent on the subject, he had seen it in her eyes every day, a silent reproof.

  ‘And I give thanks for that!’ he said. ‘Be ruled in this, Elizabeth. It will become a sourness between us if you cannot turn away from it. I have granted pardons, for all crimes. Amnesty for treasons. There will be no attainder, no executions, no punishment, no reprisals.’

  ‘So,’ Elizabeth said, her mouth a thin pale line, ‘you will let the weeds grow again. You will do nothing as the vines thrive to strangle your own children!’

  As she spoke, she ran a hand over her womb, protectively. There was not yet a true swelling there, though she knew the signs. The vomiting had already begun in the mornings, so violent this time that it had left her with broken ve
ins on her cheeks. It gave her hope of a son.

  Edward shook his head, unaware of her thoughts and showing only a stubborn anger as she pressed him.

  ‘I have made my ruling, Elizabeth. I have told you. Now be told. This will come between us if you don’t let it go. I cannot change what is in the past. My brother is married to Isabel Neville and they are expecting their first child. Can I unplant that seed? Your father and your brother John are dead.’ He pursed his mouth. ‘I cannot bring them back, Elizabeth! Your brother Anthony is Earl Rivers now. Would you have me take his title away from him? That is a path to madness. Let it be enough that I have forbidden the royal court to the Neville men. You do not have to see them, in your grief. The rest … the rest is in the past and I will not pick and pick and pick at it until the blood flows again!’

  He heard how far his voice had risen in volume and anger and he looked away, red-faced and abashed.

  ‘I think you have spent too long moping and sighing about the palaces of London, Edward,’ his wife said, gentling her voice and touching him on the arm. ‘You need to ride out, perhaps to bring the king’s justice where the sheriff and bailiffs have not yet been replaced. There are many villages wanting those now. My brother Anthony was telling me of one place not twenty miles to the north. Three men are accused of murder, caught with the red knives on them – and the jewels they stole from a great house. They left a dead father and daughter behind. Yet they sleep well in their cells and laugh at the local militia. The people there have no king’s officers. There were bloody riots a few months back and they are afraid. They dare not try the scoundrels without a judge in attendance.’

  ‘What is this to me?’ Edward retorted. ‘You’d have me pass judgment on every thief and brigand in the land? Why, then, do I even have judges and sheriffs and bailiffs? Is this some comment on my treatment of the Nevilles, Elizabeth? If it is, you are too subtle for me. I do not see your point.’