Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors

by Conn Iggulden

  Edward had wept the night before, until Earl Rivers took him aside and had a stern word with him. His father was not yet in the ground and if his shade still hovered close about them, he would certainly not want to see snivelling. Rivers was not at his best when comforting a child, though it had an effect. Edward had rubbed away his tears and worn a stiff expression ever since, so as not to shame his father’s memory.

  The prince had been at Ludlow Castle for a little over a year, not counting the previous Christmas when he’d met his sisters and seen his father fall in that great paroxysm. He had seen the king drunk before of course, weeping or singing, then dropping into slumber like a great bear, snoring where he lay. Young Edward had not thought it was the beginning of a decline, that his giant of a father would not somehow leap up again and laugh at all their fears. It was impossible that such a man was not there, even to scorn his weak arms and tell him to use the sword posts more often.

  Edward twitched his head as if a fly had settled on him. He could not afford to weep, Uncle Rivers had made that clear. From that moment, men would no longer look to him to see how he developed into a man, but to see whether he had the strength of will to be a king. It was an entirely different judgement and Edward could only stare back and try to hide the way he quailed from their gaze.

  ‘Riders ahead,’ one of his uncle’s men said suddenly. The words of warning had the effect of changing their formation on the road. Two of them lurched forward and drew swords, while the rest made a diamond around Edward, pressing so close that even an arrow would hit them before it struck the boy. He could smell their sweat and the oil of their armour and he was afraid, made more so as they reined in slowly and steadily, coming from a trot to a walk, then halting in the road. Edward peered through those ahead, watching as Rivers clicked in his throat and took his great black warhorse a few lengths further.

  Beyond their small group, a line of horsemen blocked the road. They too wore armour, painted dark-green or black, it was hard to tell in the fading light. Only one carried a torch aloft and the rest vanished into blurring darkness. Edward craned around the bulk of one of his guards to see Earl Rivers approach two men sent out to meet him.

  ‘Stand aside,’ Rivers ordered clearly. Edward saw his uncle had drawn a long-handled mace from his saddle loop. Rivers spun it in the air, making a humming sound. It was no idle threat, though the two knights facing him did not flinch from it. One of them made a half-grab to catch the thing, missing it by some way. The other pointed to where young Edward watched and Rivers leaned forward and bellowed in anger at him. A furious argument began and Edward called out in shock as one of the knights kicked his mount against his uncle’s leg, trapping it. The mace was better used at a distance and Rivers had grown old and slow without realizing. He brought the iron head down on a shoulder plate with a terrible crack, but the young knight shrugged it off. Earl Rivers had his head rocked back by a swinging punch, then another. Blood spattered as his eyes rolled, dazed. Swords were drawn then, as he fell, both by the first pair and all those behind. That grating whisper said more than anything else how many of them waited out of the torchlight.

  The captain of Edward’s guards turned in the saddle, leaning as close to the prince as he could.

  ‘Step down, son. Quickly now. Just walk into the trees and bracken by the road. There’s a chance they won’t even see you go. Go on. We’ll fight to delay them.’

  Edward stared, wide-eyed and unable to move as the lines ahead came spurring forward, filling the road. If there had been a moment to escape, it was gone.

  ‘Don’t fight, Sir Derby, please,’ he said. ‘I do not want to see you killed.’

  The knight grimaced, but he was already surrounded. Reluctantly, he bowed his head and held out his sword to one of the dark armoured men, hilt first in surrender. At Derby’s nod, the rest of them dismounted with varying degrees of frustration and dismay showing. They handed over their weapons to those who reached for them, moving with the captain to stand at the side of the road.

  Richard of Gloucester came forward then from the second rank of his men. Unlike the rest of them, he wore polished armour, gleaming like silver moonlight and making a fine show. He wore no helmet and as he looked down on the slim figure of his nephew, he breathed out, pleased.

  ‘Your Highness, I am so very relieved I was in time. Oh, thank God.’

  ‘I do not understand, Uncle,’ Edward replied. Richard gestured to the knights who had come out from Ludlow with the prince. His gaze rested on Earl Rivers, carried over to lie in the ditch where they stood. Edward’s uncle was still unconscious, though stirring.

  ‘Some of these men were under orders, Edward, not to let you reach London alive. I thank the saints I was not too late to save you.’

  His words were not spoken quietly and the knights in question responded in immediate anger and disbelief. They gestured and shouted, until they were surrounded by a far greater number of knights bearing swords and axes. They quietened down then, under that threat. One or two had not moved at all, understanding that they had heard their own death sentence.

  Earl Rivers had risen to one knee and then regained his feet in the middle of the shouting. He stood, a little shaky still. As a man who had fought in tourneys all his life, he was used to coming round from a blow.

  ‘What is this?’ Rivers called. ‘Gloucester? Is that you, Richard? Let me pass, my lord. I am bringing the prince to London to be crowned. No, by hell, my wits are half knocked out of me. I am bringing the king! King Edward. Get out of our path and I will say nothing more of this madness.’ The earl looked wary as he spoke and Richard tutted at him, making him narrow his eyes further.

  ‘My lord, it is no good,’ Richard said in reproof. ‘Your plan has been discovered. Your conspirators have betrayed you – and the foul murder of my nephew that you planned.’

  ‘You lying bastard,’ Rivers said clearly. Richard shook his head in sadness.

  ‘I must protect my brother’s son, my lord. You will be taken from here to a place of execution, as a warning to all men who might conspire against the royal line.’

  ‘You dare, Gloucester? Where is my trial? My right to speak before my peers? To even know the accusations made against me? Why should anyone take your word, Richard Plantagenet?’

  ‘These are dark times, Lord Rivers! Dark days. I have discovered this cruel conspiracy before it is too late, or so I hope. I must move as quickly as I can to protect the rightful king of England – my brother’s son – so that he can be crowned.’ He reached out to the twelve-year-old boy watching the exchange in shock and confusion.

  ‘Come to me, boy,’ Richard said softly. ‘I will keep you safe.’

  When she had been very young, Elizabeth Woodville had known a secret cave on her father’s land, a deep pool overhung by mossy cliffs on all sides. It had been a favourite pursuit in the summers to run miles over the Northamptonshire moors with her brothers and sisters, a great laughing troupe of them. They ran until they were hot and sweating and then, without stopping, they would run right over the edge and fall down and down into the green water below. The rest of the afternoon would be spent drying clothes on flat stones or criticizing the young one who had taken the lunch basket into the water with him and ruined the food. It all merged into one memory as Elizabeth looked back, but she could recall that feeling almost perfectly, of rushing up to an edge, of falling, and of fear.

  Her stomach clenched in the same way when she heard what Richard of Gloucester had done. The messenger had come on his own initiative, just a young man who had learned something she might want to hear and raced down the London road to deliver it. She had given him two gold angel coins with her husband’s face stamped on the metal. The young lad had been delighted, stumbling as he tried to bow and back away at the same time.

  Elizabeth remained sitting, looking out over London from the royal rooms in Westminster. Her husband was laid out in Windsor, dressed in armour and white for the last time. She had been to p
ray with him and kiss his cold cheek. She had held his hands, though they might have been wax without warm blood running through them. Edward had looked smaller in death than in life, the vital spark clearly absent. Yet he had been so much of her youth and hopes that it broke her heart to see him. He would never age.

  She touched a locket at her throat, the gold clasp containing a piece of his hair that she had snipped away with silver scissors. She’d tied the lock in a ribbon and it comforted her to know it was there.

  She stood then, clapping her hands loudly. Two of her maids came immediately from the room outside, curtseying before her in neat, pressed skirts and blouses.

  ‘Now don’t make a fuss,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Just gather up the girls and young Richard. He is somewhere on the grounds here. Bring them back to me and pass word to Jenny that I will need to pack clothes for them all. Very quick it has to be, girls. Quick and silent, as if we are running away from home. Do you understand? Can I trust you to be discreet? I don’t want to rouse the whole palace and half of London.’

  ‘Of course, ma’am,’ they both said, bobbing down again. Elizabeth nodded to dismiss them and they raced away. She was twelve years older than the last time she’d run to Sanctuary, though she had not forgotten those five months spent with monks. To her shame, she had hardly thought of them since then. Was Brother Paul still the guardian of the door? Her great bullock of a husband had knocked the monk down for standing in his way when he’d come for her, she remembered, recalling some of that old joy, now always accompanied by grief. How could Edward be gone? How could it be that she would never hear his booming voice again, or hear his arguments, or watch in astonishment as he kicked some item out of the way when he paced around and caught it with his foot? For all his noise and presence and reluctance to bathe, she had loved him. Perhaps not as well as he’d deserved, she did not know. It was a private thing and she’d borne ten children for him, which was love enough for most. She’d seen how their daughter Mary’s death the year before had hurt him, though he’d tried to be cold and careless, telling them all that death was just a part of life.

  She found herself weeping suddenly, without warning, so that her children came in to find her clutching a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. Young Elizabeth came to her side immediately, embracing her and making her smile through her tears. The rest of them crowded around her, trying to add their strength too so that they formed a great bundle of arms. Five surviving daughters and young Richard. God had blessed her beyond all measure, she realized. If she could only keep them all alive.

  The youngest girl, Bridget, was only three and had toddled in with a nurse in tow. Elizabeth smiled at the young woman, pink-cheeked, who brushed a tendril of hair from her face with the back of one hand, while expertly steering the child away from the fireplace.

  ‘Did Lucy and Margaret say, dear?’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll need clothes and toys for them all, packed up immediately. Within the hour.’

  ‘Shall I call for carriages, my lady?’

  ‘No, dear. I will take the children on foot into Sanctuary, across the road by the Abbey. Unfortunately, I do know the way.’

  Elizabeth comforted her daughters Cecily and Catherine, sending them to gather their most important dolls and toys, whatever they could not bear to leave behind. They came running back to pile items together where they were packed up by serving men from the kitchens and workshops, coming in by the dozen to take the bags away.

  Elizabeth was able to stand to one side and stare once more out of the windows. Her son Edward had been saved by Richard of Gloucester from a plot against his life. That was what she had been told by the messenger. The young rider had been delighted to discover he was first with the news, though it had clutched at her heart like those moments in the air above the water, just falling, falling.

  Her brother Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, was so steadfast that the very idea of him plotting against his sister’s children almost made her smile. Anthony doted on them all and he had been utterly loyal to Edward, even when Warwick’s Nevilles were entwined about the king like some pale and stinging vine. Elizabeth did not doubt her brother’s loyalty, no matter what was reported. That meant she was in danger – and that her son and her brother might already be lost.

  She bit her lip, hard enough to make the tissues swell as if she had been struck.

  Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, had revealed himself as the danger. Worse, she had not seen it in him. His adoration of his brother had been so completely innocent and without guile that she had sensed no threat from that quarter at all. The thought of young Edward in Gloucester’s grasp, in his power, made her breathe shallowly, struggling to hold back panic.

  Her gaze fell to her second son by King Edward, the boy Richard grinning at something his sister Cecily had said or done. As his mother watched him, he nudged Cecily so that she fell over a pile of bags with a squawk, then launched herself after him as he dodged all the servants coming in and out, laughing as he went. Elizabeth feared for them all.

  ‘Faster, please,’ she called to the servants. ‘I believe I will take my children on before. Please follow after us, with the rest of our things.’

  Elizabeth took young Richard’s hand as he raced past her, pulling him up short. He was nine years old and could be as rude as any stable boy when he chose, even to his mother. Yet he sensed something of her seriousness and stood still, glowering in expectation of some punishment. There was no point beating him, she had realized. The boy soaked it up like a rug and did a superb job of appearing not to care. It stung her hand more when she slapped him and she hardly troubled to any longer as a result. She still threatened to slap the cheek out of him, of course. In turn, he pretended to take her more seriously than he actually did.

  She felt his hand squirming and took a stronger grip. Young Edward had been so much easier than this little devil, she thought. God, let him live. Please, let him survive his uncle.

  ‘Come along, children, all of you,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘Pick up young Bridget, would you, dear? It’s too far for her to walk and I cannot wait.’

  With all her Plantagenet children following like geese, Elizabeth kept her head high as she walked out of the room, heading for the Abbey across the road and the little fortress that was both a refuge and a prison, for a second time. As she went, she prayed, and all the while she struggled not to sob.

  Richard of Gloucester returned to London at the head of two hundred knights, a force of men that could charge down any threat that faced them. Lord Buckingham waited with another forty men at the Moorgate, keeping it open. As a result, Gloucester came through without slowing from a canter, though Londoners had to scatter or be trampled. Richard had learned from what had gone before. The mistakes of the past could be avoided and it gave him a grim satisfaction to plan his counters before the obstacles even came about. Life went more smoothly when he saw the ditches coming, Richard had realized. He had a moment to nod to Buckingham as he shot past him.

  Nothing cleared a street quite so well as the clattering roar of two hundred horsemen coming in fast and hard. The uncrowned king sat a horse in the centre of the column, head down and staring ahead as they drove on across the city, riding for the Tower.

  Gloucester was the Lord Protector and in a crisis, his word was the closest thing to law. He had three men race ahead at full gallop along narrowing streets, yelling for the traders and people to get out of their way or be trampled. Cries of pain dwindled behind as the rest went on, the sound changing as they crossed on to stones. That was a tumult that built and built as more of them came off the mud of the smaller streets and reached the cobbles.

  Those at the Tower gatehouse had seen them. The riders Richard had sent ahead had done their work so that the gate stood open there as well. There was almost a joy to it, to see the whole world falling into place like a puzzle solved.

  The Lord Protector and his royal charge crossed the drawbridge and the gatehouse and clattered into the courtyar
d beyond, going deeper in towards the White Tower to give the others room to halt their mounts and stand, panting.

  Richard dismounted and walked to where his nephew sat high in his stirrups, his horse still wanting to bolt after such a terrifying run through the close streets. The Lord Protector stroked its nose and patted the animal, soothing the horse and perhaps its frightened rider.

  ‘There now, there now, you are safe here. There is a royal apartment that has not been used for a few years. Your father preferred the rooms in the Palace at Westminster, though I always liked the Tower more, I think.’

  ‘What about my mother?’ Edward asked. ‘My brother and my sisters?’ His voice cracked as he spoke, though he was trying hard to be brave. Richard held up both hands and helped him down to the ground, then brushed some specks of mud from his shoulders and his cheek.

  ‘I cannot say they are safe, Edward, not yet. When I heard there was a threat to you, I rode north, just as fast as I could. I went to save you first. You are the heir – the king.’

  ‘But you will find them as well? You’ll bring them to me?’

  ‘I will do my best, Edward, yes,’ his uncle said. ‘I promise you that. Go on with these men now and let them search your rooms before you enter them. Oh, have no fear, lad! I am jumping at shadows, nothing more. I will rest easy when you are crowned, but not till then.’

  He patted his nephew on his shoulder and kissed the top of his head. Edward looked back, trying to be brave as he was led away by strangers, stone walls looming over them all.