Sons of the Blood: New World Rising Series book 1

by Robyn Young

  Disentangling himself from the woman with a muttered excuse, he pushed his way through the throng, ignoring Ned’s questioning call. He still had a few pennies and farthings left from the handful of coins Grace had given him. As he headed for the barrels he thought of the solace he’d found in the dark of Triana, drifting on a raft of wine and careless friendships. But chaos had come swinging its fists into that stupor. He could no longer forget his troubles in a jug and a whore’s embrace.

  ‘Looking to dip your quill?’

  Jack saw, as he joined the queue for ale, that the brawny, jug-eared man was back. He had a couple of friends with him now.

  The jug-eared man nodded across the room to the woman Jack had left with Ned and the others. ‘See what common ink’s like, eh?’

  Jack ignored him. The pounding of the drum and the sharp cracks of the dwarves’ sticks felt as though they were clashing inside his head.

  ‘You from Westminster then?’ The man plucked aside Jack’s cloak, whistling at the silk doublet. ‘Look at these threads, lads. I reckon he’s a royal servant.’

  Jack grabbed his wrist. Looking the man in the eye, he tossed his hand aside, letting his cloak fall back into place. The man’s eyes narrowed, but his smile remained.

  ‘Maybe he knows the king?’ offered one of the others, a fat man with a sallow complexion and yellowed eyes.

  ‘Did he do it, then?’ another cut in, his voice slurred with drink. He thrust his face in Jack’s. ‘Did the king kill his own nephews?’

  ‘Course he did,’ said the fat man. But he lowered his voice as he said it. ‘Richard of Gloucester’s spilled more blood than I’ve drunk ale.’

  ‘Seems like you’ve made your own mind up.’

  Jack turned to go, abandoning the queue for ale, but the jug-eared man stepped in front of him, his companions edging in behind. ‘What you saying? That we’re fools?’

  The crowd jostled all around, applauding as the music increased in tempo. The throbbing in Jack’s head increased. It felt like his blood was boiling. ‘Get out of my way.’

  The fat man snorted. ‘He hasn’t the mouth of a gentleman!’ He grabbed at his comrade’s shoulder. ‘Come, Jerome. More ale!’

  The man, Jerome, shrugged off his clumsy grip, his eyes on Jack. ‘You and your kind, you think yourselves better than us.’ His smile had vanished. ‘But your blood is no different.’

  Jack caught the movement as the man reached towards his belt. He didn’t wait to see if there was a dagger there. He reacted, slamming his empty tankard into the man’s face. As he did so, he felt all the anger and frustration he’d been carrying for months unleash like a beast. Free and ravenous. Jerome pitched backwards, knocking into a group of men behind. Jack felt one of the others grab at his neck, but he twisted away and spun round. He flung the tankard aside, wanting to feel the impact in his fists. The fat man didn’t stand a chance. He tried to step back, hands rising in defence, but he was blocked by the crowd and had nowhere to go from Jack’s blows, the first of which was vicious enough to fell him. He went down in a great wobble of flesh, crying out as Jack kicked him in the side. The men around them were turning, shouting in excitement or anger, but most of the crowd were oblivious, focused on the dancing dwarves, stamping in time to the music.

  Jack’s head was cuffed to one side as the fist of another of Jerome’s companions smashed into his cheek. His ear ringing, he lunged at the man, grabbing his tunic and slamming his forehead into his face. He felt the crack of bones and the soaring pain in his own head, charging his blood with a rush of heat. Jerome was up again, nose dripping blood, eyes blazing. Fists balled, he came in at Jack, pummelling him in the kidneys, then the stomach, knocking the wind from him. Sucking in a gasp of air, Jack blocked the man’s next blow with his left arm and punched him again in his already broken nose. Jerome’s head rocked back and he howled in fury, but he stayed upright, clinging to Jack with one hand and clutching at his face with the other, trying to jam his thumb into his eye.

  Jack felt the crowd seething around them. Something smacked into his skull, making his vision blur, but he refused to let go, snarling in Jerome’s face as he seized his throat and squeezed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ned pushing through the crowd towards him, Hugh coming in behind. He twisted away from Jerome’s digging fingers, squeezing tighter and tighter with his hand around his throat. The man’s face was livid, blood and spit stringing from his nose and mouth. He was starting to choke. Jerome struggled, trying to pull back, panic filling his eyes. But Jack had him now. He wasn’t letting go until he felt the life leave him.

  The man wasn’t just some drunken stranger any more. He was Gloucester, hanging his father on the gallows. He was the foreign men who may have set the fire in his mother’s home and murdered old Arnold. He was that arrogant son of a bitch, Estevan Carrillo and Rodrigo stabbing Antonio in the back. He was Gregory and Francis Shawe. He was the lies and confusion, the fear and uncertainty. Jack crushed it all, squeezing every bit of it in his hands, grinning as he did so. The alehouse around him was a blur of noise and motion. He didn’t hear Ned’s warning shout. Something cracked across his skull again. And the world winked out.

  It was late afternoon when the horde descended on the Gravesend autumn fair. The waterlogged field was thronged with locals and those from neighbouring towns, busy bartering with horse traders, farmers and a host of foreign merchants displaying wares from their wharves on the river. Smoke from cooking fires blanketed the field and sharpened the air with its tang. People caught midway in conversation turned in confusion hearing a deep roaring sound coming closer, peppered with screams and shouts of alarm.

  A great host of men armed with swords and maces, knives and clubs was swarming into the field, spilling out from the nearby streets of the town. Burning torches were held aloft above faces twisted with insensible rage. The mad, blind fury of the mob. Merchants struggled to scoop up or cover goods, or else sought about for weapons to defend them with. Men, partway through deals, stuffed coins back into their purses and pushed their way through the crowds, trying to get away. Confusion became fear, which turned swiftly to panic. Cattle broke free from a pen and went storming through the press, adding to the chaos. People knocked over stalls in their haste to flee. Some slipped in the mud and went down, trampled by those behind. Others, caught in the crush, tried to hide behind carts and wagons, mothers and fathers shielding children with their own bodies.

  The mob, however, seemed more interested in looting, grabbing what they could from stalls, baying in triumph as they hefted up casks of wine and loaves of bread, snatched shoes and cloaks. Violence erupted only when the town bailiff and his men mustered and tried to take a stand. Vastly outnumbered, they were quickly overwhelmed. The men were beaten and disarmed, but the bailiff was less well treated. Hoisted by the mob, he was taken to a nearby tree and strung up, his captors whooping and cheering. Some local boys, perhaps with scores to settle, joined in the excitement, battering the twisting, choking man with sticks.

  Among the host was Harry Vaughan, armed with a keen-bladed falchion and a rondel dagger he’d stolen from his half-sister’s husband. He had left Joan’s house in Rochester two weeks ago on learning of the men all over the county who were taking up arms in defiance of King Richard. Rumours of a southern-wide rebellion had stirred his soul, charging him – for the first time in months – with hope. If the man who had executed his father could be brought down, might the attainder that had stripped him of his inheritance be overturned? At dawn, donning his brigandine and sword, Harry had slipped out of the house without a word to Ann or Joan, taking only a pack with a few supplies, his father’s signet ring and the pouch of gold angels.

  In Maidstone, he’d fallen in with a company led by a charismatic young squire named Mark Turner, whose father had lost his lands to one of the king’s northern followers. Many of the rebels he’d met had similar stories; similar axes to grind, although others were clearly in it for the fight, for the chance of plunder
and the spilling of blood. It was the latter who had taken over in the past few days, when several Kentish companies had merged into a restless host. An air of chaos and seething excitement prevailed. No one seemed to be in charge. Calls for order and patience – reminders that they must wait until the time was right; that their task was to secure the capital before joining with the forces coming from the west – were swept aside and, when word came of the fair at Gravesend, the host was off and moving.

  ‘I fear the spirit of Jack Cade is in them all!’ shouted Rowland Good, a lawyer’s clerk from Hastings, who was also in Turner’s band.

  ‘But Cade at least marched on London,’ answered Harry, watching men cheering as they opened casks of wine, wrested from a terrified French merchant. He shook his head. ‘This isn’t what I came for.’

  ‘You’ll have your chance at war soon enough, lads,’ said Turner, moving up behind them, his sword gripped in his fist. His eyes lingered on the bailiff, hanging limp and bloody from the branch of the tree, the youths having moved on. ‘The cloak is off the wolf. The king will soon know we have risen. I just pray the Duke of Buckingham is ready.’

  As the mob swarmed through the market, a plume of fire rose on a nearby hill. The Gravesend beacon had been lit. Across the broad estuary of the Thames, an answering flame flared to life. Buckingham’s rebellion had begun.

  Chapter 22

  Jack woke slowly, his surroundings coming into hazy focus. He was lying on a lumpy mattress that smelled of mildew. The air was damp and cold in his lungs. Fixing on a patch of black mould on the wall beside his head, he realised he was in the dingy upstairs room in the Ferryman’s Arms he had been sharing with Ned. In a cobweb-strung alcove further along the wall he could see the man’s cherished collection of pebbles and shells, plucked from the mud of the Thames over the years.

  I reckon some must be from other lands, he’d told Jack one evening, his voice soft with wonder as he’d turned a jet-black shard of stone between his fingers. Washed here from Africa maybe? Or Cathay.

  ‘James?’

  Whipping round, Jack was blinded by a searing pain in his head. As he squinted through the agony, he realised there was a figure sitting on the edge of the mattress. It was a woman. He eased himself upright, staring at her in disbelief. ‘Grace?’

  She smiled uncertainly at him. ‘Your friend with the dog let me in.’

  Jack tried to sort through this in his mind, but he could barely recall how he’d ended up in this room, let alone understand how Grace had come to be here. He saw a trail of blood drops leading to the door and, next to the bed, an upended tankard.

  ‘Gilbert told me where you were staying,’ Grace explained into his silence. ‘When I found out my father had business to attend to in London I asked to accompany him. I told him I wanted to pray at the shrine of the Confessor. But I came to see you, James. Jack,’ she corrected. ‘I wanted to make sure you were safe. That you understood the danger you might be in. After Arnold. After he was . . .’ Her brow furrowed and she picked at something on her glove, avoiding his gaze.

  Jack let go of his head to lay his hand over hers. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the soft material of the glove. ‘Gilbert told me everything. I’m sorry you were the one who found Arnold. I’m sorry for . . .’ He trailed off, realising his knuckles were torn and raw. All at once it came back to him.

  Touching the back of his skull he found his hair matted with blood and his scalp tender. He remembered the fight in the White Bear, then coming round, groggy and disorientated, to find himself being carried along Bankside by Ned and David Foxley. Back here, after downing a glut of ale for the pain and listening to Hugh rant about how he could have got them all arrested – jeopardised everything – he’d flown into a rage. He winced at the dim recollection of telling Pyke and the others they could go to hell. That he would execute the rest of the plan alone. That he was better than all of them. He vaguely remembered Ned hauling him upstairs, then nothing much except spinning darkness and molten anger. Oh, he would have some bridges to mend today.

  Grace touched his bruised knuckles lightly. ‘So, this . . .? This has nothing to do with those men?’

  ‘No.’ He attempted a smile, but it didn’t quite form. He thought of something he’d been wondering since Gilbert had come with the news from Lewes. ‘If the same men who questioned you did kill Arnold, how did they even know to go to him? That I had any connection with him?’ He paused, wondering if he should tell her the truth – that Thomas Vaughan hadn’t just been his master – but she answered before he could decide.

  ‘I’m not certain,’ Grace began slowly. ‘But I think it could have been Francis. He came to my house shortly after the man who questioned me about you left. I didn’t think much of it at the time – I was shaken – but looking back he wasn’t quite himself. Then, after Arnold was found and my father raised the hue and cry, I noticed my brother seemed, well . . .’

  ‘Guilty?’ Jack finished for her, his tone fierce.

  ‘I don’t think he knew what he was doing,’ she said quickly. ‘I honestly do not believe my brother intended for Arnold to get hurt. Or even you.’ She shook her head as he laughed harshly. ‘I know he isn’t a saint, but he isn’t a murderer either.’

  Jack leaned his sore head against the stone, trying to push down the wave of fury rising inside him. What had anger got him last night except bruises and yet more enemies? He had to keep that beast under control. ‘Has your father found any clue as to who the men are? Where they’re from?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You told him about the mask?’

  ‘Yes. And I reminded him what John Browe said he saw in the woods the day your mother died. But the men haven’t been seen since and my father has little else to go on. Things are uneasy, Jack – these rumours of war. People are worrying more about what is coming. Not what has passed.’ Grace waited until his eyes were on her again. ‘But I don’t understand why anyone would kill Arnold or your mother? Why would they do that, Jack? What do they want you for?’

  He watched her search his face, waiting to see if he would explain it to her. He knew he owed her answers for what she had been through: the shock of finding Arnold, the danger she had been in, the risks she had taken in coming here, lying to her father. He thought of the map hidden in the cellar below. Bernard had told him it was trouble. That, he well knew.

  Reaching out, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. There was a time when he would have given anything to have her beside him like this, her eyes filled with care. Now, it just pained him. What could he possibly offer her? He had nothing to his name and by Allhallowtide he would be gone. Everything else in his life had turned to ash. He wouldn’t have the same for her.

  He went to move, to get up, but she leaned in suddenly and kissed him. Jack closed his eyes at the warmth of her lips, the taste of her like a memory. Hearing the breath catch in her throat, her mouth opening wider over his, desire awoke in him, alive and hungry. Grasping her waist, he pulled her on to him. She came willingly, arms around his neck.

  Later, with Grace asleep beside him in the cold room wrapped in a blanket, his fingers tracing the faint constellations of freckles on her shoulders, Jack thought back to her question. What do they want you for? He thought the answer to that was down in the cellar, but what he still didn’t know was how those men had known to come searching for him in Lewes. Who, other than the handful of people, most of whom were now dead, knew that Sarah had been Thomas Vaughan’s lover, and he his son?

  And, more importantly, where now were the men who were hunting for him?

  Amaury de la Croix stood in the empty hall, staring around him at the bloodstained floor and walls. It looked as if someone had made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning the scene, but had given up halfway through, leaving wide smears that had dried black and brown. The stench of death was far less up here, nothing like the overwhelming wall of it that had greeted him down in the cellar. Finding himself able to breathe easi
er, the old priest removed his arm from his mouth and nose. He hobbled across the hall, his stick tapping on the black and white tiles.

  ‘Amelot?’ His hoarse voice echoed into the empty space stretching above him to the beams.

  He wasn’t expecting an answering call, but he hoped maybe to see her appear above him on the gallery. Amaury knew that hope was feeble. He couldn’t be certain the bodies in the cellar were his men – the decomposition was too bad to tell – but he believed they were. None of them was small enough to be Amelot, but he knew she wouldn’t stay here in this charnel house. No one would. Killed, taken or fled; she was gone.

  Still, he searched the house, moving methodically from one room to another. Only the room with the trapdoor to the cellar showed any sign of previous occupation: blankets, candles and a few packs which looked as though they had been rifled through, leaving only clothing and a few worthless personal effects. All the others were empty dust-filled chambers of stale air. Back downstairs, he checked the workshop at the front which led on to Birchin Lane. He had noticed the splintered frame outside, which had first told him something might be wrong, for he had sent Remy here with a key. The bolt had been pulled across the door, meaning whoever had been here last had left by the way he himself had come in – the cellar tunnel.

  Walking back through the hall, Amaury noticed a smear of dried blood with a footprint in the centre. Whoever had left it must surely be a giant, he thought, staring at his own foot dwarfed beside it. As he took another step he felt something small and hard through the soft sole of his shoe. Stooping with a wince, he found a red glass bead. There were others he saw, scattered across the floor, most of them crushed. Beads from a rosary perhaps? He turned the bauble between his thumb and forefinger, then, straightening, put it into his pouch and crossed the hall.