Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors (10 page)

Warwick rubbed his chin, sick of the cold and the damp. He recalled the times he had shown mercy in his life and everything that had cost him. The decision was not a difficult one and he felt no sense of regret.

‘I will try. No word to young George about it. He is already torn and I want to keep his loyalty.’

‘I wouldn’t trust him,’ Montagu said.

‘You don’t trust anyone,’ his brother replied.

‘And that has served me well.’

Jasper Tudor could hardly believe the bustle of London as he rode through narrow streets to the Palace of Westminster. He had spent the previous fourteen years in France and Flanders, surviving and taking on the sort of soldier’s work his father, Owen, would have known well. He had been a captain of a troop and a warehouse guard, a sheriff’s bailiff and, at one low point, a prizefighter who had been knocked unconscious three times. All of that was behind and he could still hardly believe how his fortunes had changed.

Out on the river, he could see merchant ships and a thousand boats being rowed or poled along in the shallows. Anything the world could provide was being sold right there
on the docks. Some of the noise and clamour dwindled as he and his nephew walked their mounts west, but there were houses and roads springing up in the land between the city and its great palace. One day, Jasper thought, the city would swallow Westminster completely. He shook his head, amazed at it all.

Yet it was not the noise of trade that excited him. In the Palace of Westminster, his half-brother Henry wore an old crown. His mother’s first son, Jasper thought in wonder, taken out of captivity like Daniel from the lion’s den, or Joseph from the pit where his brothers had thrown him. Henry was king and the star of Lancaster had risen once again. It was a heady feeling and Jasper kept glancing at his nephew, looking to share his astonishment and joy.

Henry Tudor appeared unmoved by the spectacle of the capital’s river, though Jasper could only marvel at the contrast for one who had been raised in Pembroke. Perhaps it was that his nephew had expected shouts and crowds, so had not been surprised by it all. Or perhaps, Jasper had begun to suspect, there was something off in the boy, some part that did not respond as it should. Still, he grinned at Henry, inviting him to smile. The boy had been poorly treated, no doubt, raised by cuffs and curses without parents or friends. It was no wonder he was cold in his ways and his manners. Jasper nodded to himself. He’d known a dog that had been beaten savagely for months before it broke its rope and found him in his little camp in the woods, drawn to the smell of his stew. It had taken a long time for it to stop snapping and shivering, to find its confidence again. Perhaps that would be his task for his nephew, he thought, to teach him to find a little joy, even in a raw winter’s day.

Jasper followed a path away from the river around the huge walls of the palace. He and Henry dismounted with the
Abbey at their backs, looking up in awe as they entered Westminster Hall, stretching up and away. It never failed to catch Jasper’s breath, the scale and the sheer brag of it. The king’s councils met in the cavernous halls of Westminster, the Commons and the Lords – and beyond and above were the royal quarters themselves.

Jasper touched a wooden stall for luck, where a wizened old man sold goose quills to lawyers, a penny a dozen. It was in King Henry’s gift to grant Pembroke Castle back to the man who loved her above all. Jasper hardly dared form the thought in his mind, for the discomfort it caused him. A man could hold a full bladder for a long, long time, but then be in agony as he dragged out the pot. To be close to your greatest desire could be an exquisite pain.

Floor by floor they climbed, into rooms where sound was muffled by tapestries and rugs and thick, heavy furniture, so that the whole world outside seemed to recede. Jasper and Henry were stopped again and again by king’s men wearing the embroidered red-rose livery of Lancaster and the king’s symbols of the swan and the antelope. Jasper stopped to examine a pewter badge showing King Henry on horseback, holding an orb and a cross. The guard looked pleased at the attention, replying to the enquiry while he stared straight ahead.

‘I bought it in the market, sir. Take it if you’d like. I can get another.’

‘No. Your loyalty gives me joy enough,’ Jasper said. ‘I will find my own. What a city this is, to be selling badges of King Henry before he has warmed his seat.’

‘Nowhere like London, sir, that’s true,’ the man replied, pushing his chin and chest just a little further out. Jasper grinned suddenly, heading for the next flight of stairs that would take them to the king’s rooms. More guards waited
there, staring down at him. Jasper endured it all in good spirits, noting that his nephew seemed fascinated by everything, his eyes never still.

Uncle and nephew were thoroughly searched at the last door. Jasper handed over two daggers before they could be discovered and taken.

‘I want those back,’ he said, as he and his brother’s son walked into the presence of King Henry of England.

Jasper found himself smiling as he followed the lad through. Some thirty yards away, the king was seated, his head turned to the sun streaming in through a window over the Thames. Though there were guards along the walls, only one herald and Derry Brewer stood close by the throne. Jasper had spent enough years in Pembroke’s tower keep not to be too awed at the sheer height, but it was still hard to drag his gaze from the picture of London it revealed, a place of busy little houses and roads and markets and great fields, with the river meandering through it all at a winter’s pace. It was a clear day and he tried to hold the picture as a memory.

‘Master Jasper Tudor,’ the herald announced as he drew closer, ‘who was Earl of Pembroke. His nephew Henry Tudor, son of Edmund Tudor, who was Earl of Richmond.’ The man seemed disappointed not to be able to go on further. Jasper frowned as King Henry continued to stare out of the window.

Derry Brewer stepped forward then, dressed in a fine brown doublet jacket and black hose. Jasper took in the leather strip over his eye and the gnarled-looking cane Brewer carried, more a blackthorn club than an aid to balance.

‘His Majesty is not so given to speech and idle chatter as he was when you met him last, Master Tudor. His heart was broken at St Albans – and it is not healed yet. I remember
you, though. You fought well and gave your archers to their fates without a backward glance.’

‘We’ve all had our knocks and cuts, Master Brewer. I had Pembroke taken from me and given to my enemies.’

‘Aye, the world’s a hard place,’ Derry replied carelessly, understanding that the man before him was pleased at a chance to bring up his lost possessions. Everyone who came to see King Henry had some tale of that sort. Half the lands and titles of England had been given as favours over the previous decade. It would be sorted out by the courts and in private, one or the other, though Derry suspected it would take a lifetime of wrangling.

Jasper reached over and pressed his nephew forward a pace, so that the young man stood almost touching the king.

‘This is Henry. Son of Margaret Beaufort and my brother Edmund. Nephew to King Henry himself.’

‘On the mother’s side though, wasn’t it?’ Derry said cheerfully. ‘You are the son of Owen Tudor, Master Jasper, not King Harry of Agincourt. That is a difference, in the blood and in the heart.’

‘His mother, Margaret, is of the line of kings, from John of Gaunt,’ Jasper said stiffly, recalling how irritating he found the king’s spymaster.

Derry tutted at him, then shrugged.

‘I remember there was a mistress? Some children born out of the marriage bed? It is all so long ago – and the legitimate male line is what matters. Henry the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth, mate, with York just usurpers, leaping and grabbing for coins like the London cripples on feast days.’ Jasper saw the man’s face turn ugly, his mouth twisting to a sneer. ‘So, whatever you’re after, you have no claim at all, beyond that too great a part which has already fallen to you.’

For the first time, Jasper’s brow cleared. He wondered
how many others had come to beg for old titles and anything else in the king’s gift.

‘I am not here with a claim, sir,’ he said firmly. It was bitterly hard at that moment not to mention Pembroke and make himself a liar. ‘I have brought my nephew out of Wales and I thought it would be a fine thing to introduce him to his namesake and his blood relative, King Henry. For all your barbs, Master Brewer, my nephew
is
of Lancaster.’

Derry Brewer weighed them both in a cold gaze that took in the mended tears and hard-brushed cloth as well as the quality of the old boots Jasper wore. He nodded, seeming to relax. To Jasper’s astonishment, Derry took King Henry by the hand, leaning in to look him in the eye.

‘Your Majesty? Your brother is here, with your nephew, Edmund’s son.’

With the slowness of a winter thaw, Henry’s eyes drew in some spark. He tilted his head and turned to them, the corners of his mouth rising.

‘How blessed I am, gentlemen. How blessed to see you both,’ he said. His voice was high and soft, caught between an old man’s fluting tone and a child’s song. He reached out and Jasper’s eyes tightened at seeing such pale fingers, more bone than flesh. He accepted the king’s grip even so, the touch seeming to please Henry. The king turned again towards his half-nephew and Henry Tudor let himself be pressed forward once more, silent and watchful as his hand was taken and held in turn.

‘Aren’t you a fine boy?’ King Henry said. ‘I am sorry about your father. There are so many lost now … I don’t know how …’ He trailed away and Derry Brewer was there instantly to lay the king’s arm back on to his lap and tuck a blanket in a little better. When he faced uncle and nephew once more, Derry watched them closely, protective as a ewe with her lamb.

‘His Highness has not been well and grows tired,’ he told them. ‘I will do what I can for you, Master Tudor.’

‘I did not ask,’ Jasper said.

‘I know, but you fought for him when his future was still golden. That deserves its reward.’

Jasper felt his breath catch, hardly daring to hope.

‘Is it true, then, that York has been driven out?’ he asked, dropping his voice to a whisper. London was full of lies and half-truths, without much real knowledge. All they knew for certain was that Warwick’s army had gone racing off into the north and not a word had come back since.

Jasper made no move to pull away as Derry took him by the shoulder. He would not insult a man who might win back Pembroke for him. Instead, he allowed Derry to walk him a few yards out of the king’s earshot.

‘I heard this morning that Edward of York was made to run,’ Derry said with grim satisfaction. He had worked for years to bring it about. His pride showed.

‘Not killed?’ Jasper said, biting his lip in thought.

‘Sadly, no. He reached a ship with a few men.’

‘Then he’ll come back,’ Jasper said with certainty. Derry Brewer looked at him, considering whether it was worth his while to argue the point. He decided it was not.

‘He’ll try. And we will kill him when he does. He’s fat and slow now, did you know? Drunk on spirits half the day, weeping and vomiting. The throne was too much for him, in the end. No, his time is finished. Be sure of that much.’

‘Have you ever been wrong, Master Brewer?’ Jasper said with a bitter smile. He had spent more than a decade in exile, with strangers and enemies in his home. To his surprise, Brewer chuckled.

‘I have made such errors as you would not believe, son. Just one of them cost me this eye. Still, we ain’t angels, are
we? We do our best, failures and bleedin’ all. And we go on, without looking back.’

The last two words perhaps reminded both men that they had left the king and Henry Tudor alone. When they turned, it was to see the two of them talking together. The king was smiling, the lines of worry easing on his face. Derry felt his eyes prickle and shook his head.

‘Jesus, no one ever warned me that getting old would mean weeping like a little girl whenever I saw something touching.’ He glanced over to check that Jasper was not mocking him, then laughed at himself. ‘His Highness has known a great deal of pain. I like to see him smile. Your nephew must have a way with him.’

‘Perhaps he has,’ Jasper said, shaking his head in wonder.

Edward of York stepped on to shore in Flanders, at a stone dock some hundred miles or so to the north and east of Calais. Still pale, his brother stayed close to his side. Richard had blessed his saints that the sea-illness had gone. He had never known anything leave him so weak, and yet when it had passed his strength and fitness returned almost as if they had not been stolen. The ground seemed to sway beneath his feet for a time, but then settled, his confidence coming back.

There were no soldiers waiting to capture them or hold them for ransom. Richard knew they would have outrun any pursuit over four days at sea. He felt his spirits creep upward and saw the same in Edward as his brother stood taller, looking around him with interest at the busy little market port, with scores of fishing vessels drawn up on to a shingle beach and painted a dozen colours.

‘I have been here before,’ Edward said. ‘There is a barracks, or there was, not six miles from here. If it is still there, they will carry a message to Burgundy for us.’ He looked up
at the flags waving in light winds above the town. ‘It seems Duke Charles has kept his gains here. I can only hope he will remember our friendship.’

‘He will help us?’ Richard asked. His brother nodded firmly.

‘He
hates
the French king – and where have Warwick and George been in their exile? No, Brother, Duke Charles will see his interests lie with us. To frustrate the plans of his enemy has ever been his delight. They call him the Bold – Charles le Téméraire. You will see.’

Richard understood his brother was talking up their chances, sounding more confident than he felt. The truth was that they were abandoned on a foreign shore, with just a few loyal men. Edward had lost all their father had won and he was heartbroken and utterly ashamed, hardly able to meet his brother’s eye.