Wars of the Roses 01 - Stormbird

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘Thomas, I can’t tell that to the men,’ Strange replied, rubbing his face wearily with his hand. ‘They’ll have no hope at all. They’re with me to pay back the French, perhaps to slit a few throats. You’d have them take on an army? Most of them are still hoping King Henry will relent, or Lord York. They still believe there’ll be English soldiers coming to save us. If that doesn’t happen, they’ll break and they’ll run.’

  Thomas Woodchurch shook his head, smiling wryly.

  ‘They won’t run, unless they see you riding away, or me dead maybe. I know these men, baron. They’re no stronger than the French. They can’t fight longer without losing their wind. But they are killers, baron, every last one of them. They love to murder another man with a bit of good iron, standing with their friends. They scorn a coward like the devil – and they don’t run.’

  A low whistle interrupted their conversation. Thomas contented himself with a meaningful last glance, then stood up in the shadows. The moon was out and he had a good view of the road ahead.

  He saw a bare-headed knight come staggering out of the inn with his helmet tucked under his arm and his free hand fumbling at his groin. Two more followed him and Thomas understood they were looking for a place to empty their bladders. It took a while for a man to remove a metal codpiece. Thomas remembered the smell in battle, when knights just emptied their bladders and bowels down their legs, relying on their squires to clean up after the fighting had ended.

  Thomas took his time placing an arrow on the string of his bow. He wanted them all to come out and his mind seethed with the best way to do it. If he let the French company barricade themselves inside, they could be there for days, with food and drink and comfort. He turned back to the baron, sighing to himself.

  ‘I’ll get them out,’ he said. ‘You just call the attack when it’s time. No one moves and no one comes to get me, no matter what happens. Understand? Pass the word. Oh, and tell the men not to shoot me in the back.’

  As Baron Strange vanished into the gloom, Thomas put his arrow back in the quiver and rested his bow against a wall. He tapped his hip to reassure himself he still had his hunting seax. With his heart beating hard and fast, he stepped out into the moonlight and approached the three French knights.

  One of them was already groaning with relief as he released a stream of urine into the road. The others were laughing at him as Thomas came up behind, so that they didn’t hear his approach until he was just a few steps away. The closest knight jumped and swore, then laughed at his own shock as he saw there was just one man standing there.

  ‘Another peasant! I swear they breed like rabbits around here. On your way, monsieur, and stop bothering your betters.’

  Thomas saw the knight was standing unsteadily. He gave a whoop and pushed him over in a crash of metal on the road.

  ‘You French bastards!’ he shouted. ‘Go home!’

  One of the others was blinking at him in amazement as Thomas rushed him and kicked hard at his leg. He too went over, flailing wildly as he tried to right himself.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake tonight, son,’ a third knight said. He seemed a little steadier on his feet than the others and Thomas backed away as the man drew a sword from his scabbard.

  ‘Eh? You think you can attack a man of honour and not pay the consequences?’

  The knight advanced.

  ‘Help!’ Thomas yelled, then in a moment of inspiration, switched to a French phrase he knew just as well. ‘Aidez-moi!’

  The knight swung at him, but Thomas stayed out of range, moving quickly. He could hear the man puffing after a night of heavy drinking in the inn. If it all went wrong, Thomas thought he could still run for it.

  The first knight he’d pushed over was clambering noisily to his feet when the inn door crashed open and a dozen armoured men came out with swords ready. They saw one peasant dancing around an increasingly frustrated knight and some of them laughed and called to him.

  ‘Can you not catch the devil, Pierre? Try a lunge, man! Put his liver through!’

  The knight in question didn’t respond, focused as he was on killing the peasant who had infuriated him.

  Thomas was beginning to sweat. He saw that another of the first three had drawn a narrow bollock dagger and was trying to get round to his side, either to attack or grab him for Pierre to spit with the larger blade. Thomas could hear the man chuckling blearily to himself, almost too drunk to stand, yet inching closer every moment.

  He heard Strange shout an order and Thomas threw himself to the ground.

  ‘He’s down!’ he heard someone shout delightedly in French. ‘Did he fall over? Pierre?’

  The voice choked off as the air filled with shafts, a rushing, meaty sound as the knights were struck, punched backwards as arrows sent at full draw stopped in them. They roared and shouted, but the arrows kept coming, slotting through armour and mail links so that they spattered blood behind.

  Thomas looked up to see the knight stalking him staring in shock at the feathered shafts standing out from his collarbone and through one of his thighs. The man made a sound of horror and tried to turn to face his unseen attackers. Thomas stood up behind him as the knight scrabbled round, dragging his damaged leg. Grimly, Thomas unsheathed his seax and stepped in close, taking a firm hold of the knight’s helmet. He wrenched the head back as the man spasmed in panic, revealing the links of the metal gorget protecting his throat. Using the heavy blade like a hammer, Thomas rammed it down with all the strength of his bow arm, breaking the softer iron and cutting deep before wrenching the seax back and forth. The knight stiffened, choking and weeping as Thomas stepped away and let him fall.

  Most of the knights were down, though some of the wounded had gathered around one who must have been their leader. De Roche watched in terror as he saw dozens of men wearing dark clothes and carrying longbows step out of the side streets and clamber like spiders down from roofs. As a group they walked in, silent.

  The innkeeper had come to his door, crossing himself in the presence of death. Thomas made an angry gesture for him to go inside and the man vanished back to the warmth and cheer of the inn.

  ‘Monsieur!’ de Roche called to him. ‘I can be held for ransom. You wish for gold?’

  ‘I have gold,’ Thomas replied.

  De Roche stared around him as he and four battered knights were surrounded.

  ‘You understand the king of France is just a few miles away, monsieur? He and I are like brothers. Leave me alive and there will be no reprisals, not for this town.’

  ‘You make that promise? On your honour?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Yes, on my honour! I swear it.’

  ‘And what about the rest of Maine? Will you leave that territory in peace? Will your king withdraw his men?’

  De Roche hesitated. He wanted to agree, but it would be such an obvious lie that he could not speak. His voice lost its edge of desperation.

  ‘Monsieur, if I could arrange such a thing, I would, but it is not possible.’

  ‘Very well. God be with you, my lord.’

  Thomas muttered an order to the archers around him even as the French baron cried out and raised his hands. One of the shafts went straight through his palm.

  ‘Check the bodies now,’ Thomas said, feeling old and tired. ‘Cut their throats to be sure. There can’t be witnesses.’

  The men set about the task as they would have slaughtered pigs or geese. One or two of the knights kicked as they were held down, but it did not take long.

  Rowan walked back to his father with his longbow in his hand. He looked very pale in the moonlight. Thomas clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Ugly work,’ he said.

  Rowan looked out at the road full of dead men.

  ‘Yes. They’ll be angry when they hear,’ Rowan said.

  ‘Good. I want them angry. I want them so furious they can hardly think and I want them to charge at us the way they did at Agincourt. I was just a boy then, Rowan. Almost too young to carry the
water casks for old Sir Hew. I remember it, though. That was the day I began to train with my bow, from then till now.’

  London was simply overwhelming, too much to take in. Margaret had ridden with her new husband from the abbey at Titchfield to Blackheath, where she had seen the Thames for the first time and, in that moment, her first bloated body floating past on the surface.

  The king’s party had been blessed with a clear day, with the sky a washed-out blue and the air very cold. The mayor and his aldermen had met her there, dressed in blue gowns with scarlet hoods. There was an air of gaiety and festival to the procession as Margaret was led by hand to a large wheeled litter, pulled by horses in white satin cloth. From that point, she went where they took her, though she looked down at her new husband riding at her side at every spare moment. The procession choked the road to a standstill as they reached the single massive bridge that spanned the river, joining the capital city to the southern counties and the coast. Margaret tried not to gape like a country girl, but London Bridge was incredible, almost a town in its own right that stretched across the water on whitewashed brick arches. Her litter passed dozens of shops and homes built on to the bridge itself. There were even public toilets and she blushed as she glimpsed boards hanging above the river, set with circular seats. Her litter moved on, revealing strangeness after strangeness, then halting on the centre of the bridge. Three-storey buildings pressed in on both sides, but a small area had been set as a stage and the filth underfoot had been covered over with clean rushes. Two women waited there, painted and dressed as Greek goddesses. Margaret stared as they approached and pressed garlands of flowers over her shoulders.

  One of them began to declaim lines of verse over the noise of the crowd and Margaret had gathered only that it was in praise of peace before whips cracked and the scene was left behind. She craned round to see Yolande riding side-saddle with her husband Frederick. As their eyes met, both women were hard-pressed not to laugh in delight and wonder.

  The mayor’s men marched on with them through the streets, accompanied by more people than Margaret had even known existed. The entire city seemed to have come to a halt to see her. Surely there could not be any men and women beyond those she saw. The crowds struggled against each other, climbing up buildings and sitting on the shoulders of friends to catch a glimpse of Margaret of England. The noise of their cheering could be felt on her skin, and her ears ached.

  Margaret had not eaten for hours, that small detail forgotten in the vast organization of her trip through her husband’s capital city. The smell of the streets went some way to steal her appetite, but by the time she reached Westminster Abbey she was weak with hunger. The litter-horses were allowed to rest and Henry himself took her hand to guide her inside.

  It was strange to feel the warmth of his hand on hers. She hadn’t been sure what to expect after the wedding in Titchfield, but in the days that followed she had never been left alone with the young king. William and Lord Somerset in particular seemed determined to whisk the king away from her at every opportunity. At night, she slept alone and when she had asked and then demanded to know where the king was, she was told by sheepish servants that he had ridden to the nearest chapel to spend the night in prayer. She was beginning to wonder if what her father said about the English was true. Not many Frenchwomen remained virgins a full week after marriage. Margaret gripped Henry’s hand tightly, so that he looked at her. She saw only happiness in his eyes as he walked her over the white stones into one of the oldest abbeys in England.

  Margaret suppressed a gasp at an interior far grander even than the cathedral at Tours, with a vaulted ceiling stretching far above in spars of stone. Sparrows wheeled overhead in the cold air and she thought she could surely feel the presence of God in the open space.

  There were wooden benches filled with people stretching the length of the ancient church. At the sight of so many, her steps faltered, so that Henry had to put an arm around her waist.

  ‘There isn’t much more,’ he said, smiling.

  A psalter of bishops carrying curled staffs of gold went before her and Margaret let herself be guided to twin thrones, where she and Henry prostrated themselves before the altar and were blessed before seating themselves and facing thousands of strange faces. Margaret’s sweeping gaze was arrested by the sight of her father in the front row, looking smugly self-satisfied. The day lost some of its glory then, but Margaret forced herself to nod primly to the slug. She supposed any father would want to see his daughter made a queen, but he had not been at the wedding, nor bothered to inform her he would interrupt his travels to cross to England.

  Some of the congregation were eating and drinking, enjoying the holiday atmosphere. Margaret’s stomach groaned at the sight of a cold roasted chicken being passed along a row. A great cloak of white and gold was placed around her shoulder and the archbishop began the Latin ceremony.

  An age passed as she sat there, trying not to fidget. At least she had no vow to remember, as a wife and queen. The safety of the realm was not her responsibility to protect. The archbishop rolled his words on and on, filling the space.

  Margaret felt the weight of a crown pressed on to her head. Instinctively, she reached up and touched the chilled metal, just as the congregation began a crashing wave of applause and cheering. She bit her lip as her senses swam, refusing to faint. She was queen of England and Henry took her arm as he led her back down the aisle.

  ‘I am so very pleased,’ he said over the noise of the clapping and calling voices. ‘We needed a truce, Margaret. I cannot spend every night in prayer. Sometimes I must sleep, and without a truce I feared the worst. Now you are queen, I can stop my vigil.’

  Margaret glanced at her husband in confusion, but he was smiling, so she merely bowed her head and continued out into the sunshine of London to be seen by the crowds.

  There were green spring buds on the trees, swept back and forth in gusts as cold as midwinter. Thomas longed for warmer days, though he knew they would bring the French into Maine. It had been a month since he and his men had killed the French knights and their baron. Even Strange had been forced to admit their first taste of vengeance had worked well for recruitment. That single act had brought men into their group who had been ready to leave all France behind. They’d coalesced around his little force, doubling their numbers.

  Thomas looked sideways at his son, lying on his stomach in the gorse. He felt pride for the man Rowan had become, before the thought soured in him. He didn’t want to see the boy killed, but he could not send him away, not then. Too many others looked to Thomas for a slender reed of faith in what they had started. If he kept Rowan safe by sending him to England to join his mother and sisters, he knew how they would see it. Half of them would drift away again, choosing to save themselves.

  Thomas saw movement in the distance and he sat up, knowing his raised head would be all but invisible to whoever it was. He saw horsemen, walking their mounts at an easy pace so as not to leave behind the trudging men at their side.

  ‘See them, Rowan? God smiles on us today, lad. I tell you that. God bloody smiles.’

  Rowan chuckled quietly, still hidden in the dark green scrub. Together, they watched the group moving slowly along the road. There were perhaps forty horsemen, but Thomas looked most closely at the walking men. They were the ones he had come to see and they carried bows very much like his own. Twice as many as the men-at-arms they accompanied, the archers were worth their weight in gold as far as Thomas was concerned.

  When the group was just a few hundred yards away, Thomas rose up and stood to wait for them. He made sure his bow was visible but unstrung, knowing they would be wary of an ambush so deep into Maine. He saw a ripple go through them as they noticed the pair of strangers by the road and it was not hard for Thomas to spot the man giving orders to the rest. He’d left Baron Strange behind, but part of him wished he were there. Nobles had their own style and manners and this one would be suspicious enough of strangers as it was.
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br />   ‘If this is a trap,’ Thomas murmured, ‘you’re to run, Rowan, like a rabbit through the gorse. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Rowan said.

  ‘Good lad. Stay here then – and run if I’m taken.’

  Thomas strode closer to the group, which had halted on first sight of him. He felt the pressure of more than a hundred men staring his way and he ignored them all, focusing on the one who led.

  ‘Woodchurch?’ the man called while he was still twenty paces away.

  ‘I am,’ Thomas replied.

  The lord looked relieved.

  ‘Baron Highbury. These are my men. I was told you’d arrange a little hunting trip if I met you here.’

  ‘You were told correctly, my lord.’

  Thomas reached the man and took the gauntleted hand lowered to him in a firm grip. Highbury wore a huge black beard that ended in a flat line, cut wide like the blade of a shovel.

  ‘The Duke of York was quite insistent there should be no private excursions into Maine, Master Woodchurch. My men and I are not here, if you follow me. However, if we are out hunting deer and we come across some French rapists and murderers, I cannot answer for the conduct of my men, not in those circumstances.’

  There was anger behind the man’s smile and Thomas wondered if he was one of those whose friends or family had suffered. He nodded, accepting the rules.

  ‘Have you come far, my lord?’ he said.

  Highbury sniffed.

  ‘From Normandy these last few weeks. Before that, my family had a little country place in Anjou. I hope perhaps to see it again one day.’

  ‘I cannot say as to that, my lord. But there will be good hunting in Maine, that much I can promise you.’