Wars of the Roses 01 - Stormbird Read online

  ‘That’s the only warning, Richard old son,’ he heard Derry say. ‘The next one goes through your neck.’

  The duke spun round in time to see a ribbon of dark purple curtain flutter to the ground. In its fall, it revealed a long slit that ran around the ceiling on one side, almost for the full length of the room. Three men lay flat in the gap, so that he could see only their heads and shoulders, as well as the terrible weapons they were aiming at him. Two of the three watched him coldly as they stared down the sights of crossbows. The third shuffled back on his elbows to reload. York gaped up at the men, seeing the sunlight gleam on the polished bolt tips. He swallowed as Derry laughed.

  ‘I told you, Richard. The king calls or you don’t come.’

  Below their feet, a great crash told them the outer door had given way at last. The two soldiers with the duke exchanged a worried glance, their good mood evaporating.

  ‘Lads, lads!’ Derry said, taking a pace towards them. ‘I’m sure your armed presence near the king is just a misunderstanding! No, don’t back away from me. I have a few things I’d like to say to you before we’re done.’

  The clatter of running soldiers grew louder and voices shouted a challenge as men poured into the room.

  ‘I’d lie down if I was you,’ Derry told the two soldiers.

  They dropped quickly, holding their hands out empty so as not to be run through by one of the red-faced bawling men as they came in. York remained standing and folded his arms, watching with cold eyes. He knew none of the men-at-arms would dare to touch him. When his soldiers were trussed securely on the floor, they all seemed to look to Derry for new orders.

  ‘That’s better, Richard,’ Derry said. ‘Isn’t that better? I think it is. Now, I don’t want to be the one responsible for waking the king up this morning, if we haven’t already. How about we take this outside? Quiet as mice now, lads.’

  The duke strode through the assembled guards with his face a shade of dark red. No one stopped him heading down the stairs. To Derry’s eyes at least, it was almost comical the way the guards picked up their prisoners as quietly as possible and trooped back down after him.

  York did not pause at the body of his biggest soldier by the shattered outer door. His man Francis had his throat slashed open and lay in a spreading pool of blood. York stepped over him without a downward glance. The bound prisoners moaned in fear as they saw their companion, so that one of the guards reached down and cuffed the closest one hard across the face.

  The sun was bright after the gloom of the inner rooms. Derry strolled out behind them all and was immediately approached by the sergeant-at-arms, a man who sported a huge white moustache and practically shook with anger. Derry accepted his salute.

  ‘No harm done, Hobbs. Your men deserve a pint on me tonight.’

  ‘I wanted to thank you, sir, for the warning,’ the sergeant said, glowering at York as he stood watching. For all the gulf between their ranks, the security of Windsor was the sergeant’s personal responsibility and he was furious at the assault on it.

  ‘It’s no more than my job, Hobbs,’ Derry replied. ‘You’ve one body to clear away, but that’s all. I think our point has been made.’

  ‘As you say, sir, though I don’t like to think how far he reached. I will still make an official complaint if you don’t mind, sir. This is not to be borne and the king will hear of it.’ He spoke for the duke’s benefit, though York listened without any visible reaction.

  ‘Take our pair of trussed chickens to the guardhouse, would you, Hobbs? I’d like a word with them before I send them back to their ship. I’ll deal with his lordship myself.’

  ‘Right you are, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  With a final glare hot enough to melt iron, the old soldier marched his men away, leaving Derry and York alone.

  ‘I wonder, Brewer, if you can survive having me as an enemy,’ York said. He had lost his red flush, but his eyes glittered with malice.

  ‘Oh, I dare say I can, but then I’ve known much more dangerous men than you, you pompous prick.’

  There was no one to hear and Derry’s mask of wry good nature dropped away as he faced the duke and stood threateningly close to him.

  ‘You should have stayed in France and carried out your king’s orders,’ Derry said, poking him in the chest with a stiff finger.

  York clenched his fists in rage, but he knew Derry would beat him into the ground at the slightest provocation. The king’s spymaster was known to frequent the fight rings in London. It was the sort of rumour he made sure all his enemies heard.

  ‘Are they his orders?’ York grated. ‘A wedding and a truce? My men to remain in Calais? I command the army, Brewer. Yet I get no word until now. Who will protect the king if his soldiers are three hundred miles to the north? Have you even thought of that?’

  ‘The orders were genuine?’ Derry asked innocently.

  York sneered.

  ‘The seals were correct, Brewer, as I’m sure you know. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it was your hand on them, melting the wax. I’m not the only one who thinks you have too much control over King Henry. You have no real rank, no title, yet you issue commands in his name. Who can say if they have truly come from the king? And if you poke your finger at me again, I will see you hanged.’

  ‘I could have a title,’ Derry replied. ‘He’s offered me one before. I think, though, that I’m perfectly happy as I am, for the moment. Perhaps I’ll retire as Duke of York, who knows?’

  ‘You couldn’t fill my shoes, Brewer. You couldn’t even fill my codpiece, you low-born …’ The duke was interrupted as Derry barked a laugh at him.

  ‘Your codpiece! That’s a fine jest. Now, why don’t you go back to your ship? You’re due at the king’s wedding next month. I don’t want you to miss it.’

  ‘Will you be there?’ York asked, his gaze sharpening.

  Derry didn’t miss the implication. It was one thing to scorn the man’s authority in Windsor, while surrounded by the king’s guards. It was quite another to consider how the Duke of York might act in France.

  ‘I wouldn’t be absent for such a joyous occasion,’ Derry replied. He watched as York smiled at the thought.

  ‘I’ll have my personal guard with me, Brewer. Those pretty orders don’t prevent that. With so many bandits on the roads, I won’t feel comfortable with less than a thousand men, maybe more. I’ll speak to the king then. I wonder if he knows half the games you play.’

  ‘Alas, I am but the agent of the royal will,’ Derry said with a smirk that hid his dismay at the threat. ‘I believe the king desires a few years of peace and a wife, but who can know his mind, truly?’

  ‘You don’t fool me, Brewer. Nor that bootlicker Suffolk. Whatever you’ve offered the French, whatever you’ve concocted between you, you’re both wrong! That’s the worst of it. If we offer a truce, do you think the French will leave us in peace? It makes us look weak. If this goes ahead, we’ll be at war before the summer is over, you poor dullard.’

  ‘I am tempted to risk the king’s anger just to see you knocked out on this grass, my lord,’ Derry said, standing very close to the other man. ‘Give me a moment to consider the pros and cons, would you? I would enjoy breaking that sharp beak of yours, but then you are a duke and you have a certain level of protection, even after the prick you made of yourself this morning. Of course, I could always say you took a tumble when the guards chased you away.’

  ‘Say what you like, Brewer. Your threats and prods don’t frighten me. I’ll see you again, in France.’

  ‘Oh, are you off then? Very well. I’ll send your men on in a while. I’ll look forward to continuing our chat at the wedding.’

  York marched away back to the main entrance of the castle. Derry watched him go, a thoughtful expression on his face. It had been a little closer than he’d hoped. He’d heard the duke was coming two nights before, but the guards at the outer gate should have been warned. York should never have reached the inner keep, never mind the d
oor to the king’s own rooms. As it happened, Henry was still praying in the chapel, but the duke didn’t have that vital piece of information.

  For a moment, Derry considered the conversation. He had no regrets. A man like York would have tried to get him killed just for the scene at the king’s rooms. It didn’t matter that Derry had made it worse with insults and threats. It couldn’t be worse. He sighed to himself. Yet he couldn’t let the outraged duke see the king either. York would have had Henry agreeing to everything and the whole subtle arrangement and months of negotiations would have been wasted. Derry had known when he woke up that it would be a bad day. So far, it had met his expectations in every aspect. He wondered what odds he could get on surviving the wedding in Tours. With a rueful expression, he realized he should make preparations for not coming back.

  He remembered old Bertle doing just the same on more than one occasion. The spymaster before him had survived three attempts at poison and one man waiting for him in his rooms with a dagger. That was just part of the job, Derry recalled him saying. A useful man made enemies, that was all there was to it. If you were useful to kings, your enemies would be quality. Derry smiled at the memory of the old man speaking the word with relish.

  ‘Look at his clothes, lads. Look at this knife! Quality, lads,’ he’d said, grinning proudly at them as he stood over the body of the man found in his rooms. ‘What a compliment to me that they sent such a gentleman!’

  Old Bertle may have been an evil sod, but Derry had liked him from the start. They’d shared a delight in making other men dance, men who never even knew the choices they made were not their own. Bertle had seen it as an art. For a young man like Derry, fresh from war in France, his teachings had been like water to a dry soul.

  Derry took a deep breath, feeling calm return to him. When Bertle summoned his six best men and gave his authority to one of them, you knew things were serious, that he might not be coming back from wherever the work took him. Each time it was a different man, so that they were never sure which one of them was truly his chosen successor. Yet after a dozen close shaves, the old man had died in his bed, slipping peacefully into sleep. Derry had paid three physicians to check the corpse for poisons, just to be sure he didn’t have to track someone down.

  At peace once more, Derry cracked his knuckles as he strolled towards the guardhouse. It wouldn’t make things any worse for him to give the two soldiers a proper beating. He was certainly in the right mood for it.

  It promised to be a glorious summer’s day as the sun rose, with the air already warm and the skies clear. In Saumur Castle, Margaret was up before the light. She was not sure if she had slept at all, after so long lying in the heat and darkness, her mind filled with visions of her husband and not a little fear. Her fourteenth birthday had passed a few months before, almost unremarked. Yet Margaret had noticed, not least because she had begun to bleed the following morning. The shock of that was still with her as she bathed and checked herself in the light of a night lamp. Her maid had told her it would come each month, a few miserable days of bundling rags into her undergarments. It seemed a symbol of change to her, of things going so fast that she could barely take in a new discovery without a dozen others clamouring for her attention. Were her breasts fuller? She thought they were and used a looking glass to pinch and squeeze them into something like a cleavage.

  The castle was not silent that day, even at so early an hour. Like mice in the walls, Margaret could already hear distant voices and footsteps and doors slamming. Her father had spent gold like a river over the previous months, employing a vast staff and even bringing dressmakers from Paris to do their best with his daughter’s skinny frame. Seamstresses had been working every night in the castle rooms, sewing and cutting cloth for her sister and three cousins, who had travelled from the south to accompany her at the ceremony. Over the previous days, Margaret had found the girls slightly irritating as they preened and giggled around her, but somehow she had gone from knowing the wedding was far off to the actual morning, without any sense of how the time had vanished. It was still hard to believe today was the day she would marry a king of England. What would he be like? The thought was so terrifying she could not give voice to it. Everyone said his father had been a brute, a savage who spoke French like a dithering geck. Would the son be the same? She tried to imagine an Englishman holding her in his powerful arms and her imagination failed. It was just too strange.

  ‘Good morning, my … husband,’ she said slowly.

  Her English was good, so her old governess had said, but then the woman had been paid to teach her. Margaret blushed furiously at the thought of sounding like a fool in front of King Henry.

  Standing in front of the glass, she frowned at her tangle of brown hair.

  ‘I do take thee to be my husband,’ she murmured.

  These were the last moments she would have alone, she knew. As soon as the maids heard her moving, they would descend in a flock to primp and colour and dress her. She held her breath at the thought, listening with half an ear for the first footsteps outside.

  When the knock came, Margaret jumped, gathering a sheet around her. She crossed quickly to the door.

  ‘Yes?’ she whispered. The sun was not yet up. Surely it could not be time already?

  ‘It’s Yolande,’ she heard. ‘I can’t sleep.’

  Margaret cracked open the door and let her in, pushing it gently shut behind her.

  ‘I think I slept,’ Margaret whispered. ‘I remember a strange dream, so I must have dozed for a while.’

  ‘Are you excited?’

  Yolande was staring at her with fascination and Margaret drew the sheet around her shoulders with some attempt at modesty.

  ‘I am terrified. What if he does not like me? What if I say the wrong words and everyone laughs? The king will be there, Yolande.’

  ‘Two kings!’ Yolande said. ‘And half the noblemen of France and England. It will be marvellous, Margaret. My Frederick will be there!’ She sighed deliberately, swirling her nightshift hem over the oak floorboards. ‘He will look very handsome, I know. I would have married him this year if not for this, but … Oh, Margaret, I did not mean anything by that! I am content to wait. At least Father has restored some of the wealth we lost. It would have been a pauper’s wedding last year. I just hope he has left enough to marry me to Frederick. I will be a countess, Margaret, but you will be a queen. Only of England, of course, but still a queen. Today!’ Yolande gasped as it sank in. ‘You will be a queen today, Margaret! Can you conceive?’

  ‘I believe I can bear one or two,’ Margaret said, wryly.

  Yolande looked blank at her pun and Margaret laughed. Her expression changed on the instant to one of panic as she heard trotting footsteps in the corridor outside.

  ‘They’re coming, Yolande. Bloody hell, I’m not ready for them!’

  ‘Blerdy ’ell?’

  ‘It’s an English saying. John told it to me. Bloody hell. It’s like “sacré bleu!” he said, a curse.’

  Yolande beamed at her sister.

  ‘Bloody hell, I like it!’

  The door opened to admit an apparently endless stream of maids, bearing steaming buckets of water and armfuls of strange-looking implements to work on her hair and face. Margaret blushed again, resigned to hours of discomfort before she would be allowed into the public gaze.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Yolande murmured again at her shoulder, awed as the room filled with bustling women.

  6

  With the sun setting, Derry let his head sag as the cart trundled along the road, cursing occasionally as the wheels dipped into holes and sent him lurching from one side to the other. He had been on the road for eighteen days, hitching rides whenever he could, with his nerves jangling each time he heard hooves. He hadn’t relaxed for a moment since his confrontation with the Duke of York and had certainly not taken the threat lightly. His own network of informers and spies around the fortress of Calais had brought him unpleasant news. The duke’s men wer
e making no secret of the fact that they wanted a word with Derry Brewer. From a professional point of view, it was interesting to be on the other side of an effort to track him down, instead of being the one pulling the strings. That was little comfort as Derry scratched a dozen flea bites in the back of the creaking wagon.

  The drover currently staring into the middle distance was not one of his men. Like hundreds of other travellers coming south from Normandy for a gawk at kings, Derry had paid a few coins for a spot on the cart and given up on the thought of riding hard and fast into Anjou. He’d slipped York’s men easily enough in the port, but then Calais was always full of bustling crowds. The tracks and lanes leading south into Anjou were a better place to pick up a lone traveller, without fuss or witnesses. At least the wedding would be over before he saw another sunset. Derry hadn’t dared use an inn for as long as he’d been on the road. It was too easy to imagine a quick sweep picking him up while he snored unaware. Instead, he’d slept in ditches and stables for two weeks – and smelled like it. He hadn’t meant to cut it quite so close, but his means of travel were all slow, hardly faster than walking. He’d kept count of the mornings and he knew the marriage was taking place the next day. It was almost an agony to know he was almost there. He could sense York’s nets closing around him with every mile.

  Derry rubbed a grimy hand over his face, reminding himself that he looked more like a peasant than most of the real ones. A battered straw hat drooped over his eyes and his clothes had never been washed since the day they’d come off the loom. It was a disguise he’d used before and he relied on the stink and filth to keep him safe.

  As he trundled south, he’d seen riders coming past in the duke’s livery half a dozen times. Derry had been careful to stick his head out and watch them, just as any farmer would do. The cold-eyed men had stared at everyone they passed, searching for a glimpse of the king’s spymaster.