Stormbird wotr-1

by Conn Iggulden

  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 were 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.

  He’d decided he’d use his razor on them if he was spotted. It was a finger-width line of the finest steel, with a tortoiseshell handle. If they found him, he’d vowed to make them kill him by the road rather than suffer the duke’s torturers or, worse, the man’s smug pleasure in landing such a fish. Yet the duke’s men hadn’t stopped at the sight of one more grubby peasa
nt staring from the back of an ox-cart.

  It could have been humiliating to be forced to go south in such a way, but in fact Derry enjoyed the game. He thought it was that part of him that had drawn old Bertle’s attention, when Derry was just another informer and ex-soldier, with his knees showing through torn trousers. Derry had been running a little fight ring in the London rookeries, with his hand in the pockets of all the men involved. It had earned him a fair bit, as he’d combined setting the odds with rigging the matches, giving strict orders to whichever fighter would win or lose.

  He’d only met Bertle once before the night the old man had come to one of his fights. Dressed in his dusty blacks, Bertle had paid for a penny seat and watched it all: from the finger signals Derry gave the fighters, to the chalk board of odds and how they shifted. When the crowd went home, the old man remained, coming up to him with a gleam in his eye as Derry paid four or five bruised and battered men their share of the takings. Recognizing him, Derry had waved off the lads who might have shoved him out into the night and just let Bertle sit and observe. It had been after midnight when they’d cleared the warehouse of all sign that it had been used. Whoever the owner was, he didn’t know he’d hosted fights that night. He’d never know unless he found blood under the fresh sawdust, but either way, they never used the same place twice.

  Even then, Derry had sensed Bertle’s amusement and delight at mixing with the rough fight crowd. He’d let all the others go until the old man was the only one remaining.

  ‘What is it then, you old sod?’ Derry had said to him at last. He remembered Bertle’s slow smile then, a hard little man who’d seen most kinds of evil and shrugged at them all.

  ‘Proper little king-thief, ain’t you, son?’ Bertle had said.

  ‘I do all right. I don’t cross the gangs, or not often. I make a living.’

  ‘You do it for coin then, do you? To make an honest crust?’

  ‘Man has to eat,’ Derry shot back.

  Bertle had just waited, raising his eyebrows. Derry still remembered the way the old man’s face creased in delight when he’d given an honest answer. He still didn’t know why he had.

  ‘I do it because it’s fun, you old devil, all right? Because no matter who wins, I always do. Satisfied?’

  ‘Maybe. Come and see me tomorrow, Derry Brewer. I might have a job or two for you, something worth doing.’

  The old man had shuffled off into the night, leaving Derry staring after him. He’d been certain he wouldn’t go, of course. Yet he had gone anyway, just to see.

  Derry shook off the daze of memories, knowing he couldn’t just drift while the ox ambled along. He’d thought through a lot of lines to say when he strolled up to the Duke of York at the wedding. As long as he could find a place to wash and change first, of course. The grubby sack he rested on was filled with carefully folded garments, good enough to transform him if he could just get there with his throat uncut. He wondered what the farmer thought of the strange passenger who looked like he couldn’t afford a meal, but could still pay good silver to ride through the night. Derry grinned to himself at the thought, glancing up at the man’s wide back. The road had cleared as the sun set, but they’d rolled on, as Derry needed to be there. He’d even dozed, rocked to sleep by the cart and only waking once when the ox let out a tumultuous fart like the crack of doom. It had Derry chuckling into his sack at the sheer silliness of his position.

  The eastern sky lightened in shades of grey long before he could see the burning line of the sun. Derry had been to Anjou a few times in his travels, placing and taking messages from men in his employ. He knew there had been a trial and execution of some Jewish moneylender a month or so before and he had a rough idea of the debts incurred by René of Anjou. The man had secured his position with a bit of ruthlessness Derry could appreciate, but he wondered idly if he should investigate the man’s holdings a little further. Before the rents from Anjou and Maine came in, he’d be vulnerable. A couple of burned shops, perhaps a crop sowed with salt so that it rotted in the fields — the possibilities were endless. With just a little push, René of Anjou might have to come begging to his daughter’s new husband for a loan — and then they’d have a lever into the French court. That was assuming Derry could survive the wedding day, of course. The lords Suffolk and Somerset had their instructions if Derry didn’t arrive, but knowing that was hardly a comfort.

  As dawn came, the drover insisted he had to rest, feed and water the great black ox that had ambled its way south for two days. Derry could see the double tower of the cathedral of Tours standing above the fields in the distance. It could not be more than a few miles away. With a sigh, he jumped down from the cart and stretched his legs and back. The road was mercifully empty in both directions. He assumed those who had travelled to see the wedding were all there by then. He was the only one still on the road, with the possible exception of the duke’s riders still searching the countryside for him.

  Even as he had the thought, he caught a glimpse of a dust cloud in the distance and ran for the verge, jumping into a bank of wild grasses almost as high as his head.

  ‘Three silver deniers if you say nothing,’ he called out in French, digging himself in as deep as he could. It would have surprised Lord Suffolk to hear Derry’s perfect fluency in that language.

  ‘Eleven,’ the drover replied as he attached a feed bag to the slobbering mouth of his ox.

  Derry half-rose in indignation.

  ‘Eleven! You could buy another ox with eleven, you bastard!’

  ‘Eleven is the price,’ the man said, without looking round. ‘They’re getting closer, my fine English lord.’

  ‘I’m not a lord,’ Derry grated from the long grass. ‘Eleven, then. My word on it.’

  The sun had risen and he chafed at every lost moment. He could not take another step towards the cathedral with riders in sight. He wondered if he could creep away on his hands and knees, but if they saw the grasses move from the height of a saddle, it would be all over and done for Derry Brewer. He remained where he was, trying to ignore the flies and bright green grasshoppers that crept and buzzed around him.

  He dropped his head right down when he heard the jingle and clatter of horsemen approaching the cart. They were so close he felt he could have reached out and touched them. He heard a braying English voice speaking execrable French as it shot questions at the drover. Derry breathed out in relief as the man said he had seen no one. The riders didn’t waste much time on one more grubby peasant and his ox. They trotted on quickly, so that silence returned to the roadside and Derry could hear birdsong and bees once again. He stood up, looking after the troop as they disappeared in the direction he wanted to go.

  ‘Eleven deniers,’ the drover said, holding out a great spade of a hand.

  Derry reached into his sack and counted out the coins. He handed them over.

  ‘Some would call this robbery,’ he said.

  The man only shrugged, smiling slightly at the wage he had earned for himself. As he turned back to the cart, he didn’t see Derry draw a billy club from his sack. One blow to the base of the man’s neck sent the drover staggering. Derry rapped him again on the dome of his skull, watching him fold with satisfaction.

  ‘They would be wrong,’ Derry told the unconscious figure. ‘That was just force majeure negotiation. This is robbery.’

  He took his coins back and eyed the road to Tours and the risen sun. The ox chewed contentedly, looking at him through long lashes that would have suited a beautiful woman. The cart was too slow, Derry decided. He’d just have to run the last few miles.

  Leaving the drover to wake in his own time, Derry set off, pounding down the road to Tours. After only a short way, he cursed aloud and came back. The drover was groaning, already beginning to wake.

  ‘You must have a lot of bone in that big head,’ Derry told him. He counted out three silver coins and placed them in the man’s hand, folding the fingers over.

  ‘This is just because you r
emind me of my old dad, not because I’m going soft,’ he muttered. ‘All right?’

  The drover opened one eye and looked blearily at him.

  ‘All right then,’ Derry said. He took a deep breath and began to run.

  Margaret hardly dared move in the dress. The new cloth itched and felt strange on her, as stiff as if she were dressed in boards. Yet she could not deny it looked magnificent in the long glass. Seed pearls were sewn on to every exposed part, so that they rattled whenever she moved. The veil was as thin as spiderweb and she marvelled at being able to see through it. She could no longer bend to look at the perfect satin slippers she wore underneath. Her feet seemed far away, as if they belonged to someone else, while she had been reduced to a head, perched on acres of white cloth. Only the servant fanning at her kept sweat from breaking out as the heat of the day rose.

  Margaret was flushed by the time she was finally allowed to come out into the sunshine. Saumur Castle was the best part of forty miles from the cathedral at Tours and a grand carriage waited for her in the courtyard. It gleamed with polish and new black paint, drawn by two matched geldings in glossy brown. A canopy had been erected over the open seats, to protect her from dust as they rode.

  Her mother came out of the main house, approaching with both pride and strain written clearly in her expression. Margaret stood awkwardly as her dress was tweaked and tugged into the perfect position to take her seat.

  ‘Keep your head high and don’t slouch,’ her mother said. ‘The dignity of the family rides with you today, Margaret. Do not shame us. Yolande! Help your sister.’

  Yolande scurried forward, lifting armfuls of cloth to prevent them dragging on the stones as Margaret took careful steps. A footman she did not know helped her up the step and, with a gasp, she ducked through the gap and almost fell on to the bench inside. She was in, with Yolande fussing around to arrange the train in such a way that it would not wrinkle too badly. Another carriage was already waiting to enter the courtyard and it felt as if the entire staff were coming out to wave her off. Margaret concentrated on breathing shallowly, feeling dizzy from the constriction. She could not have slouched if she’d wanted to: the panels of the dress held her upright. She raised a hand to the lines of maids and footmen and they cheered her dutifully. Her gaze fell on one she did know, from running into her during the king’s visit. That young woman was smiling and waving a handkerchief with tears in her eyes. Margaret felt like a painted doll compared to the little girl she had been then.