by Robyn Young
While some of Henry’s men were troubled about leaving comrades behind, Harry felt no such compunction. To him, Mark Turner and the others had only ever been a means of survival – safety and food being easier to come by in numbers. He owed them nothing.
‘They’re back.’
At Cheyne’s sharp voice, Harry saw four men striding up the street, shoulders hunched against the rain.
Henry Tudor ducked into the shelter of the building, shaking the rain from his dark hair. He was several inches taller than most of the others, with the exception of his strapping uncle, but slim, with a long face and ice-blue eyes, one of which seemed to move of its own accord. Harry found it disconcerting, as if the young man were still observing him even when he was looking elsewhere.
‘King Charles will grant us asylum.’
Henry’s news was met with prayers and relief.
‘We have been granted money for clothes and the king has given me permission to raise men-at-arms. Come. We have food and shelter waiting for us.’
Harry hung back, waiting for the others to head out into the storm, the men grinning now and clapping one another on the back. Just weeks ago all had seemed lost.
‘Come, Harry.’ Henry’s lips peeled back in a rare smile, as he motioned him to follow. ‘Walk with me.’
‘What of the others?’ asked Cheyne, as they made their way down the street. ‘Our men in Vannes?’
‘We’ll send a message,’ Jasper told him. ‘Let them know that if they can flee Brittany they will find safe haven here.’
‘We’ll tell them all,’ responded Henry, lifting his face to the storm. ‘Those in Brittany, Wales and England – all who would follow the dragon. Here in France I will build my army.’
Harry barely noticed the rain that hammered on his head as he strode beside Henry. No matter the failings of his father and no matter what that bastard, Wynter, had taken from him in the past. He was the one here with Henry Tudor, self-styled King of England. He was the one who, God willing, with every step was now heading towards his restoration.
As he walked, Harry uncurled his fingers, let his father’s signet ring fall from his palm into the rain-washed street. He had a new master now.
Chapter 34
Amelot crossed the Seine by Le Pont Notre-Dame, clutching the sheaf of parchments. The sixty houses that lined the wooden bridge on both sides were so tall she could see nothing of the river, except occasionally beneath her feet in gaps in the boards; snatches of glittering green.
The bridge was busy as usual, merchants, guildsmen, artisans and peasants rubbing shoulders with theologians and doctors from the Sorbonne, and canons from the myriad churches clustered on the left bank. None of them paid much attention to the slim youth with a short crop of hair walking in their midst – a lawyer’s clerk perhaps, carrying papers for his master. Still, Amelot felt self-conscious, clasping the parchments to her chest as she wove deftly through the crowds, their chatter loud in her ears. She had grown taller over the past year. Worse, her breasts had swelled, forcing her to bind the lengths of linen, dampened to make them taut, even tighter around her thin frame. She wondered if a surgeon could remove the unwelcome buds; she had seen a gangrenous limb being amputated at St Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark. But she didn’t know how to ask.
The sun was warm for April and Amelot was hot in her snug-fitting tunic, but she kept up her swift pace. Amaury had run out of parchment late last night and was impatient for more. There were many parchmenters jammed alongside booksellers and stationers in the Latin Quarter’s riddle of streets, where the old priest had lodgings in an attic above a baker’s, but Amaury liked his vellum from his supplier in Les Halles. Amelot was glad to run and fetch it for him. She was happy to do anything that would please the old man. He wasn’t her blood kin, but he was the closest thing to family she had.
It had been a hard time for her master since they returned from England over a year ago, Amaury coming home to find his place at court taken up by others favoured by King Charles’s regents. He still had contacts in the royal household, but did not have the influence or access he once enjoyed. Instead, he worked almost ceaselessly on the manuscripts he had gathered over the years in King Louis’s service. Some had been discovered in the libraries of dukes and foreign dignitaries, some unearthed like rare gems from the shelves of booksellers, some bought, some gifted, and a few stolen by her own nimble fingers. Some were beautifully bound with wooden boards held together by metal clasps to protect their pages, covered in worn leather or rich fabric. Many were just rolls of paper or vellum, sullied by age and travel, flowing with faded scripts and mysterious symbols she could not comprehend. Amelot would smell them sometimes, closing her eyes as she imagined the places they had come from; dreaming of the unicorns of Africa and the golden cities of Cathay, fearing the strange islands where people were said to have four eyes or the heads of dogs.
Amaury had spent months stooped over his sloping desk, copying each painstakingly into Latin, squinting through the glass of his spectacles by the light of a candle, cursing in summer when the stink from the polluted Bièvre filled the airless room, suffering in winter when the nights were so cold the inks froze in his wells and the joints of his hand became swollen and she had to rub olive oil and herbs into his knotted skin. She would sit cross-legged by him while he worked, sharpening his goose quills with her knife and keeping his leather wells filled with black iron gall ink thickened with gum arabic and vermilion that stained her fingers like blood. She would smooth the velvet-like parchment before he wrote on it, scraping it with pumice, then blow on the page when he was done to help the inks dry.
Every few months, a man would arrive from Florence to collect the manuscripts and translations. He and Amaury would talk alone for hours, their voices humming through the wall of the narrow space she had made herself a nest in, with its tiny window out on to the rooftops where doves would alight and eat from her hand. After the man had gone, Amaury would be restless for days, muttering about his place here in France and wondering if, with the loss of the map, he had lost the faith of his masters. His reputation for seeking vanished texts had been legendary, earning him the name Huntsman. She knew he feared his star had burned its brightest and was now fading, even as the mission continued unabated. Amelot did not know how to comfort him, except to do her duties.
Passing through the bridge’s gatehouse, under the eyes of the royal provosts, she hastened through streams of people on to the Île de la Cité. Amaury had called it the cradle where Paris had been born, but Amelot thought the island in the Seine was more like a brooch, its bridges clasping the left and right banks together. It was dominated to the west by the Palais de la Cité, all lofty turrets and massive walls, and to the east by the immense cathedral of Notre-Dame and the hospital Hôtel-Dieu. The streets around the palace, crowded with timber-beamed houses and shops, were busier than usual. They had been like this for the past month, ever since the royal court arrived in Paris, trailing in its wake an army of Englishmen. Last week, Amelot overheard Amaury talking to a lawyer, who had complained about the large number of foreigners and mercenaries being lodged in the palace, while preparations were made for an invasion of England.
Ahead, the narrow street was blocked by a group of men, drinking and idling in the spring sunshine. A few were crouched in the dust playing dice. Some were eyeing people who passed through their midst, occasionally laughing at some insult or joke made by their companions. Others were more serious, talking intently in their blunt English tongue. The air reeked of sweat and ale. Amelot was crossing the street to avoid their company when she saw the little white dog. As it ran across her path barking, she followed it with her gaze to a group on the edges of the crowd, where it jumped excitedly around the legs of a large man who bent down to feed it a piece of pastry.
Amelot was stopped in her tracks. She recognised the man with the dog instantly. She had seen him that night on the flooded banks of the Thames, him and the three others standing th
ere with him – the menacing one with black burns on his face and the two with the faded brands on their brows. The sight of them took her rushing back to that time and the horror of the room where the giant in the mask had tortured her. She found her feet and began to run, heading for the Latin Quarter.
Henry rushed forward as the ball struck the court. Lunging, he swung his racquet in a fierce arc, smashing the ball back across the cord to his opponent. Sir John Cheyne flung himself towards it. The large man missed, slicing his racquet through air. The ball bounced off the back wall of the court and rolled away.
The young men, watching the game through the mesh that covered the court’s large windows, cheered loudly. Henry wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. His shirt was soaked and clinging to his back. He jogged over to Cheyne, who had dropped his racquet and was bending forward, hands planted on his knees, sweat dripping from his nose. ‘Well played.’
His bodyguard shook his head in admiration. ‘Not well enough, my lord,’ he said, between breaths.
As the door was opened for him, Henry headed out. He offered his racquet to Sir John de Vere, who had been standing there, arms folded, watching him play. The Earl of Oxford, a staunch Lancastrian and veteran commander of the wars against York, had joined him in winter, having escaped from Hammes Castle near Calais, where he had been imprisoned for treason for almost a decade.
Oxford, whose thick mane of hair was streaked with white, held up his hands with a bark of a laugh. ‘In this heat?’ He motioned to Sir James Blount, the former captain of Hammes, whom he had convinced to join him in his flight along with the castle garrison, much to Henry’s jubilation. ‘I nominate the good captain.’
Blount took the racquet with a grin and a nod to Henry. ‘I’ll make you proud, my lord.’
As one of Blount’s men moved in to take Cheyne’s place, Henry took a cup of watered wine from his servant’s tray. He drained it, closing his eyes against the brightness of the spring sunshine. Bees buzzed around beds of flowers in the expansive gardens, the sweet scent of herbs only partially disguising the stink of the river that flowed beyond the palace walls.
On their arrival a month ago at Eastertide, Lady Anne Beaujeu, declaring the city odours bad for the health of the young king, had chosen to lodge with her brother and the Duke of Bourbon outside Paris at Château de Vincennes, far from the crowds and grime. Henry and the exiles had been given quarters in the city itself, most in the fortress of the Louvre, the rest here in the Palais de la Cité. Once the heart of old royal power the palace was now the centre of justice and law, holding within its walls the city’s largest prison.
Henry paced between the rows of flowers, walking off the tightness in his limbs, the sweat drying on his skin. Behind him, the men had gathered to watch the next game, the thock of the ball echoing on the quiet. He had been taught to play by Duke Francis and had enjoyed competing with him, until the duke had become too frail. He’d played handball in England in his youth, but tennis was a wholly different game. A sport of kings, Francis had called it, extolling its benefits for the fitness of a man’s body and mind. Henry had insisted all his men take it up. They’d had access to jousting fields and hunting parks in King Charles’s company, but trapped here in the city they needed another sport to keep them strong, ready for the war that was now on the horizon.
After fleeing Brittany last autumn, they spent the winter moving slowly up the Loire valley, from château to château. Duke Francis, on hearing of the treachery of Pierre Landais, had arrested his treasurer, since rumoured to have been hanged. Desperate to make amends, Francis allowed the men at Vannes to join Henry in France without penalty, sending them with the message that he’d had no knowledge of the attempt to extradite him. Henry conveyed his gratitude to the duke, then cut all ties with his former gaoler. France was his route to the throne now. Although, admittedly, it had been a rocky path so far, King Charles engaged these past few months in a conflict with his younger sister’s husband, the Duke of Orléans, who had attempted to wrest control of the regency. A truce had been agreed between the warring siblings, but the sooner his destiny was in his own hands the better.
Preparations for war were well under way. Edward Woodville and Thomas Grey had gone ahead to Rouen to ready a base for him, from where he would oversee the assembly of a fleet at Harfleur, funded by King Charles. He had raised mercenaries with the king’s permission and more English, Welsh and even a contingent of Scots had joined him, taking his company up to five hundred.
Henry glanced round as a rough cheer rose. Most of the men clustered at the windows of the court were those who had been with him the longest; those he trusted, as much as he trusted anyone. He thought how confident they all were, how keen to return to their homes and their lives. He never imagined so many sons of York would follow him, but even with their strength and support he knew there was a hard fight to come. The last tidings from England spoke of King Richard smearing his name, delivering proclamations against his blood, tainted by bastardy.
With Buckingham dead and no word as yet from his mother as to whether Lord Stanley would be with or against him, Henry’s list of allies in England had grown thin and uncertain. He had sworn to his supporters that he would wed Elizabeth of York, uniting their houses, but he had no idea if such a union was even still possible, Elizabeth Woodville and her daughter now known to have submitted themselves to Richard’s custody.
As he was heading back to the court, rolling his shoulders to flex his muscles, Henry saw Jasper approaching. There was another man with him, dressed in threadbare robes that flapped around his gaunt frame as he walked. Henry stiffened, not recognising the stranger. Spying his nephew, Jasper bypassed the court and headed through the gardens. They met in the shade of a cherry tree, from which blossom flurried like snow.
‘My lord,’ greeted the stranger, bowing before Henry. The sun glared in his red hair and beard, both of which were unkempt and shot through with grey. ‘My name is John Morton. I am a friend of your mother’s.’
Morton. Henry had a fleeting memory from years ago in England. His warden had granted him a rare visit to his mother, married then to Stafford. John Morton had been there at a dinner she was holding. Henry remembered they had seemed very close, heads bent together as they talked through the meal. He knew from reports that the bishop had been involved in Buckingham’s rebellion and was an ally. But by Morton’s hollow cheeks and the exhaustion in his eyes, he guessed it wasn’t glad tidings that had brought him here. ‘Your grace,’ he greeted him warily. ‘You have word from England?’
‘No, my lord. From Burgundy.’
Henry listened intently as the bishop spoke of his mother’s involvement in the attempted liberation of the princes, filling in the gaps left by her long silence. Henry had known what she was planning, but hadn’t been able to find out whether or not she had been successful. The men who fled England all maintained the belief that the two boys were dead at their uncle’s hand. Their murders were the reason so many had flocked to his banner. And so it was with rising apprehension that Henry now listened to Morton’s tale of how the boys still lived. One in the Tower, the other vanished.
‘Lady Margaret sent me to Burgundy when she learned Prince Edward may have been taken to the court of his aunt. I spent months watching for sign of him. King Richard had spies there too,’ Morton added, looking between Henry and Jasper as he spoke. ‘Over time, through a page I brought into my trust, I discovered that one of the duchess’s personal guards would leave the city every few months with a wagon of supplies. No one seemed to know where he went or what his purpose was, but each time the wagon returned empty. When the page informed me it was due to depart I followed. My journey took me deep into Burgundy.’
‘Did you find the prince?’ Henry cut in, impatient for the bishop to get to the point.
‘Yes. He is living in a hunting lodge, near Dijon. I saw him with my own eyes.’
‘You secured him?’ asked Henry, peering back the way Mo
rton had come, half expecting to see the youth standing there in the palace gardens.
‘No, my lord.’ Morton opened his hands at Henry’s narrowed eyes. ‘I am a man of the cloth, not of war. There was one there with him, guarding him. Lady Margaret said a soldier of Sir Thomas Vaughan’s retinue had spirited the boy away. If I tried to take him and failed, I feared I might not live to tell you his whereabouts.’
Henry didn’t answer. His gaze went to the tennis court as the men clapped Sir James Blount, the winner of the game. This could change everything. Dead, the princes were martyrs: symbols that had inflamed men’s hearts and built him an army. Alive and free they were something far more dangerous. His own claim to the throne remained weak, reliant more on prophecy and the promised marriage to their sister than his own blood. Even with the declaration of the princes’ illegitimacy they were still far more worthy of the crown. And all would know it.
‘I will go,’ Jasper said into his silence. ‘Secure the boy.’
‘No,’ said Henry quickly. ‘We are to depart for Rouen soon. I need you with me while we prepare the fleet.’ He thought, wondering who he could trust to bring the prince into his custody without word to anyone. None of Edward Woodville or Thomas Grey’s men, certainly. After a moment, a name came to him. ‘You say a soldier of Vaughan’s was guarding the prince?’ When the bishop nodded, Henry turned to Jasper.
His uncle nodded, reading his mind.
Chapter 35
Ned Draper handed his sword and dagger over reluctantly as he was led inside the grand chamber. Glancing around at the painted walls and gilt ceiling, the vivid colours lit by the light coming through lancet windows that looked out on to a balcony, he fought the urge to whistle through his teeth. Clearly, Henry Tudor was favoured by the French king, who – he’d heard it said – had just granted his guest one thousand French soldiers for the coming war.