Nick tossed another log onto the campfire. A game trio of sparks cracked up into the gloaming sky and flared out. He felt manly tending the fire. Feeling Sophia’s eyes on him, he smiled as he poked the heart of the flames with his pitchfork. The bark on an overturned block of elm glowed burning scales. A wave of heat roasting his shins, his oddly ice-cold feet, he stood and surveyed the hundreds of fires burning all round them on the heath. How many poor souls hereabouts were free, warmed by the stoked fires of freedom as he was, thanks be to God.
‘Ah, that’s good, son.’ Harry held his old hands out to soak up the heat. He had a lot of pain in his knuckles. The joints swelled in winter and protested when he did too much handiwork even in the heat. Alcohol was the only cure, lots of it. That and chewing the bitter willow bark.
Sophia looked to the star-studded heavens, a fine mizzle fell from a sky full of glimmerings, causing her eyelids to flutter. ‘Dew’s falling fast, father.’
‘It’ll be a damp night again,’ Wat agreed, and sighed. Sleeping out in the open reminded him of his campaigns. He was glad to be out of harness, slumped down on his saddle, swigging from a bottle of Beaune he’d pilfered from Sir Robert’s cellars. A fine wine. It helped clear his thoughts.
It had been a long day even by the measure of the long days of June, the longest day of his life. Much had been achieved after he had despatched Sir John Newton to the King. He had ridden to Blackheath, overseen the fortification of the encampment there against a cavalry charge. They had dug ditches, roped together wagons to funnel horses into killing grounds littered with brake-leg pits and vicious stakes. He and Elder Abel – his right hand man now that Jack was in Essex – had drilled the footmen with mail and armour to hold in three battles and wait until the enemy came to them. The archers were to remain on the flanks and loose everything if and when the enemy passed their range markers. Black rain. It would be carnage if the King’s cavalry charged in. There was no knightly honour in this storm of arrows, no sense of God’s judgement decreed by victory in battle, but this was how the English, under the command of King Edward and the Black Prince, had won at Crecy, Poitiers, Najera and countless other actions along the Borders of Scotland.
That was if the battle went well …
If it went badly, if the archers panicked, broke, ran, as unseasoned men were apt to do, it would be a massacre on a scale never seen before. The nobles would show no mercy, like when the Frenchies flew the Oriflamme.
And there was no way of knowing how the fighting would go on any given day. That was in God’s hands. Or the Devil’s. In battle the last two hundred strides before you met the enemy line full-on were named ‘the Devil’s Claw’. The crunks of hundreds of crossbows discharging. Quarrels flying. Pranged men dropping down into death.
What was in his hands he had done as Captain. As a father – he was not so sure; how was he to save his Sophia from harm? If he sent her away, it might be demoralising for his men, but he could not in good conscience allow her to stay. A father was first and foremost a protector. That is why this had all begun. Something had to be done to pluck her from the Devil’s Claw. ‘Harry?’ Wat said. ‘I want you and Nick to do something for me tomorrow.’
‘Name it, Wat,’ Harry said.
Nick nodded. ‘We’re all ears.’
‘At dawn I want you to escort Sophia away from here. I want you to take her to the Low Countries – to her Uncle Hans.’
Sophia let the blanket she was wrapped in drop from her shoulders. ‘What!’
‘You know the lad and me will do as you ask, Wat,’ Harry said.
‘I’m not leaving you, father!’ Sophia sprang to her feet, her hands tautening into white-knuckled fists. ‘I will not.’
Wat could not look her in the eye. ‘This is for your safety. Your mother, God rest her soul, would never forgive me if you got hurt.’
Sophia stood over her father, using her shadow to beat him down. ‘But the King is coming. I want to see the King!’
‘King Richard may not come, Sophia. He may send his knights against us. If the archers do not do their jobs, these fellows will be chaff in the wind against heavy horse and no mistake.’
Sophia glared at her father. ‘I won’t go! You can’t make me!’ She turned on her heel and tore off as fast as she could run. Which was fast. She was fleet of foot and had put many a boy in the village to shame in races.
‘Sophia? Come back here,’ Wat shouted after her.
Harry slapped Nick on the shoulder. ‘Well, who has the legs of a March hare here – me? Get after her, lad.’
Sophia ran blindly through the swirls of shadow-folk ringing the fires until her heart was thumping against her breastbone. Threading through, pushing past all these people. The multitude. Their jokes, songs, tunes, the stories, the mirth filled her ears. None of it meant anything to her. She just wanted to be away from everybody, alone, by herself to think, to know what to think. Down by the river.
Nick chased after her at a steady pace, unsure whether he really wanted to catch her. He did not want to bring her back. He kept her in his line of sight and that was enough.
The crowd thinned, and Sophia headed for the bell tower of a church, visible over a screen of gnarled yew trees. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught sight of Nick negotiating his way past some swineherds in stolen armour. He was shadowing her. They locked eyes. She ran harder towards the church.
Nick called after her. ‘Sophia? Come back.’
An old swineherd cackled, ‘Playing hard to get is she, boy?’
‘Give her one from me,’ added another.
‘Go boil your heads,’ Nick told them, and pelted after her.
Sophia ran through wooden gates and into the churchyard. She lit off the path and flitted through the tombs and gravestones. Her chest heaving, her pace slowed. She was beginning to flag.
Nick put on a turn of speed and gained on her. He caught her by the elbow at the church door. ‘Sophia. Stop!’
‘Get off me.’ Sophia whirled around, tried to slap him round the face.
Nick blocked the blow. ‘Sorry,’ he said and let her go. He was breathing too hard to say anything else.
Out of breath, Sophia stooped, hands on knees, to draw in some much-needed air. ‘I’m not going away,’ she said, and then tears came, wracking sobs.
Nick embraced her, held her tight as he could to calm her, as her ribs convulsed. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he told her.
Tight in his chest, with the warmth of his arms around her, she felt free to let go of all the loss of leaving home, the tight grip of grief on her heart loosening. She was not afraid with him. He gave her strength. Hope. And more – faith, the blessed child of strength and hope. She kissed him on the cheek.
Her face was wet. The heady salt-sweet scent of her tears made him somehow tender and lustful at the same time. He kissed her on the eyes, the cheek, so softly, then pressed his lips onto her mouth.
XVIII
Morning mist rose in curls off dark waters of the Thames, down by the Water Gate. Shapes shifted in the swirls of grey, like the ghosts of the dead and damned, appearing, disappearing. Chancellor Sudbury was not afraid of the dead, nor of ghosts. He had seen many a body. The dead were corrupt, corruption itself, but once burnt or buried, all evil had passed from them. The living were what frightened him. It was the living one had to be wary of, the legions of them lying in wait down the river. With devils in their midst they were baying for his blood: mundus inversus, mundus perversus.
‘Majesty, take it, I beg you?’ Chancellor Sudbury said. He held out the Great Seal of England, in his shivering hand, the same sure hand that had administered the boy the Eucharist just ten minutes ago in the chapel. He was scared, but he was not trembling with fear: the still chill over the river cut to the bone. It was the cold. Not fear.
‘I refuse it.’ King Richard turned to watch his bodyguard – seven knights in their ceremonial robes, a score of serjeants-at-arms and a score of archers, and seven Dominican scribes – march ou
t of the Tower, down the wharf, over the gangplank, to board the royal barge. ‘I refuse to accept your resignation, Simon-Says … for now.’
Damn the petulance of the boy. Chancellor Sudbury had only accepted the position, poison grail that it had become, a little over three years ago. Bibere venenum in auro. ‘If I step down, Majesty, it may aid you in your negotiations, help to placate the rebels.’
Sir Robert sneered. ‘You want to be the King’s martyr do you, Sudbury? Or is it that you are a named traitor and fear losing your head?’
‘How dare you suggest I am a coward,’ said Chancellor Sudbury, ‘I do this for England.’
‘You are a snivelling coward, nothing more,’ Sir Robert replied. ‘I am on that list and I am not afraid to meet the rebels face-to-face. Let them try to take me. I will cut the first traitor in half.’
‘When I return, I will consider what to do with you, Simon-Says.’ King Richard pulled the ermine-lined collar of his royal robes up round his neck and walked to the barge, escorted by Sir Robert.
Chancellor Sudbury called after him: ‘I will pray that the Lord gives you the wisdom you will need to save London, Majesty.’
Once the King and Sir Robert were aboard, the barge captain ordered: ‘Cast off!’
Two lads cast off, lobbed the mooring lines onto the deck, and leapt back onto the barge.
King Richard hid his pleasure. When he accepted the resignation of his gaoler Simon-Says, the shackles of the Regency Council would be confined to History, and two years of immense frustration, patronisation, inertia, would be finally over. He would free to be King, the rightful King, and rule as he saw fit. Dieu et mon droit!
The barge shoved off the wharf. A dull drumbeat drove a stroke. Rippling oars dipped into the black water, rowing down-river.
Chancellor Sudbury stood a vigil of quivers, a solitary figure on the wharf, until the barge, beat by beat, stroke by stroke, slid invisible into the mist. He had offered himself up, a sacrifice for England. It had nothing to do with cowardice. Non sibi sed suis … Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friends.
XIX
Swathed in a cloud of unknowing – perched high on the row of fifteen spikes, lance-points jutting from the Southwark gate of London Bridge – a crow stripped the lips off a half-rotten head. There were three other skulls up there on display, feeding the birds, at what had been nicknamed ‘Traitor’s Gate’.
Below, on the turret of the gate tower, two serjeants warmed their hands over a burning brazier. They’d just relieved the night-watch, and were no friends of the river’s chilly mists which greyed everything.
Serjeant Hunter sighed. ‘Only a whole day of this shit left, boss.’
Master Serjeant Grindcobbe snorted. ‘With the gates shut, we’ll be checking every soul in and out. King’s bloody orders.’
‘This isn’t guard duty, boss,’ Serjeant Hunter moaned, ‘It’s purgatory.’
Master Serjeant Grindcobbe shrugged. Guarding the gates in summer was normally a piece of piss because half the city – those cunts who sucked their soup off silver spoons – buggered off away from the stench to live it up in the countryside in their manors. He could sit in the shade, shoot dice, and let the raw recruits deal with all and sundry and the hot dry sun. But now Mayor Walworth and aldermen were shitting their pants about the rebels infiltrating the city, and had ordered the drawbridge drawn up and the gates shut tight. As if that would stop them! There were as many rebels and malcontents within the walls as without, if not more. The apprentices would run riot at the drop of a ducat! As would those who were barred from the guilds.
Hooves clattering across the bridge – the rising din funnelled the whole way up the narrow road by the two rows of tall, skinny houses.
‘Someone’s in a hurry to leave us,’ Serjeant Hunter said, and went to the wall to see who it was.
Master Serjeant Grindcobbe didn’t take his gnarled old hands off the heat. All the knuckle joints in his fingers were swollen, and ached these days. Truth of it was he was barely fit for guard duty. If he had to swing a sword he could, but he knew his days at arms were numbered less than a hundred, and what lay beyond that was begging alms. More and more he regretted surviving Poitiers: that would have been the right time and right place to go.
Serjeant Hunter witnessed two posts of men-at-arms in gleaming plate armour, and mounted archers skid to a halt at the foot of the gate tower. Strange. No jupons. No banners unfurled. They were not displaying their coats-of-arms. The only distinguishing marking was the King’s colours: lions on red quatrains, lilies on blue.
‘Open the gates in the name of the King!’ cried the lead rider, who was kitted head to foot in fancy new plate.
Master Serjeant Grindcobbe snorted. ‘Who is it then, Hunter?’
Serjeant Hunter turned. ‘Don’t know, boss. No coats-of-arms. They’re flying the King’s colours though.’
Master Serjeant Grindcobbe looked up from the glowing coals, nodded sagely. When he’d fought with the Free Companies in France, stripped to bare plate, no names, terror was the tactic. ‘See no evil, hear no evil, Hunter. I wouldn’t be surprised if this lot are off to launch a sally against the rebels.’
‘There aren’t enough of the buggers, are there?’
‘No. But maybe they’re the vanguard of a bigger force? Tell that lazy cunt of a gatekeeper to open up and lower the ruddy drawbridge.’
XX
Tiptoe. Harry took care to step over the sleep-strewn bodies of shepherds, circled round the black and grey rose of a spent fire. ‘Don’t worry. She won’t have gone too far.’
Wat peered into the eerie river mist. ‘That’s why I’m worried. I wanted her to be out of harm’s way this morning, on board a ship, heading for Flanders.’
‘Sophia!’ Harry called out.
A heron spooked from its roost, taking flight from a willow tree by the riverside.
‘Jesus!’ Harry ducked as the bird wafted low over his head, fixing him with its red-rimmed eyes.
Wat hardly noticed. He should have been preparing to meet the King! Not chasing Sophia about Greenwich like a mother hen. ‘What has possessed her to disobey me like this?’
‘She is nearly a woman, so who knows? He who labours to find obedience in a woman may as well look for fish in the woods and bees in the sea.’
‘Fat lot of use your son was! God knows where he’s got to?’ Wat had his suspicions about what might have happened, but was giving the boy the benefit of the doubt – until proved wrong.
‘He’ll turn up. Never had much sense of direction.’ Harry sincerely hoped Nick had not caught up with Sophia, for his boy’s sake.
‘Sophia!’ Wat cried.
Sophia’s eyes snapped open – the world was mist and haze as if she was dreaming. Had she heard her name being called? No. She shivered, wrapped in Nick’s arms, closer to him than she had ever been to anyone, lying as one body. They had become one soul last night. Kiss had followed kiss into love, first love, wonderful warm love. But now it was bitter cold, her feet were ice.
Through the mist, Wat picked out the outline of an old church tower. ‘Sophia!’
That was no dream. It was her father’s voice! She seized Nick by the tunic and shook him. ‘Nick, wake up?’
Nick awoke in a panic. ‘What?’
‘Sophia!’ cried Harry.
‘We have to get out of here.’ Sophia latched onto Nick’s hand and pulled him to his feet. Then she hared off.
Nick ran with her, pell-mell, away from the haunting voices of his father and her father. They threaded their way through the sleeping masses of people, laid out like corpses on a battlefield of dreams.
Their names as accusations fading into the distance, they stumbled onto a track, and followed it on the wind up to the heights of the heath, until it became a wide road.
‘What are we going to tell Wat?’ Nick asked.
‘We’ll pretend nothing happened,’ Sophia said. ‘You searched for me all night. I got los
t in the darkness. We both found our way back to the camp in the morning light.’
‘Right?’ Nick swallowed deeply. ‘I’m not very good at lying.’
Sophia laughed. ‘Let me do the talking.’
XXI
So, the villeins wanted his head. Loyalty was asleep. Right was dead. And Truth broke the neck of him who carried her.
‘Sir Robert …’ King Richard said, ‘… the captain fears you will wear a hole in the barge and sink us if you continue your pacing.’
‘Majesty.’ Sir Robert half-smiled, stopped pacing the foredeck to the beat of the stroke drum, and stood still as a statue.
The villeins want your head. Sir Robert had sworn to Princess Joan that he would protect the King her son. Last night. In the King’s chambers, she took his hand. Her fingers were cold, but her eyes were hot. He held her hand, squeezed it. ‘I will protect him, to my dying drop of blood.’
They want your head. Sir Robert comforted himself with the laughable thought that the rustic rebels would not dare to seize a Regent so popular with the Londoners. They want your head. No man could lawfully draw a weapon in the presence of the King, under a flag of truce, on pain of death. Hah! If they wanted it so badly, this Wat Tyler could come and fetch it himself. What-for was what he would get!
King Richard was feeling viciously nauseous on the river as they made fast progress down-river to Greenwich, riding the tide. He got dreadfully seasick at sea, even if it was like glass. The King could not be sick; to be sick would be a sign of cowardice, a great shame, one remembered by those present and whispered to chroniclers of his reign to record as history. The river was not the sea, but still his breakfast of smoked eel rose and fell on the wind-whipped river waves. He willed his stomach to become a net to trap the eels. He stepped up to the prow of the boat. He would be remembered as the brave, gallant King Richard! Minstrels would sing of this moment for the rest of his reign, and into eternity.
Three Lions of England Page 11