The King's Daughter (60 page)

“Has the Earl surrendered?”

“Has Wyatt won?”

“Is it a rout?”

Panic swept the courtyard. Gage’s soldiers bolted toward the great hall where the men of the Queen’s personal guard were stationed, and shouted, “Pembroke has gone over to Wyatt!” Panic took hold of the Queen’s guard and theyslammed the hall doors on Gage’s men, keeping them out. Panic trembled through the knots of the Queen’s ladies huddled in the great hall’s corners. “God have mercy upon us!” one cried.

Queen Mary walked quietly, stiffly, out the rear of the hall. She mounted the stairs to the empty gallery above the gatehouse. She went to the windows and looked out toward Charing Cross. Beyond the village and the hedged fields and the houses lining the Strand, the walls of the city stood implacable under the bright morning sun.

Mary could hear the commotion all through the palace: women screaming and sobbing, and Gage’s soldiers, barred from the hall, running through the corridors. She saw her deserting soldiers burst out from the kitchens and dash through the woodlot and toward the water stairs on the river. She stood alone, watching. Shakily, she made the sign of the cross, touching her forehead and heart, leaving the priest’s anointed cross of ash a sooty smudge on her pale brow.

Isabel ran all the way. She turned the corner of Ave Maria Lane and stopped at what she saw ahead. Peckham had done it. The big doors of Ludgate stood wide open. There was no sign of royalist soldiers, and fifty or so of Peckham’s men stood milling at the gate, ready to defend it. Isabel saw Peck-ham himself directing a man into position. Peckham noticed her and threw her a brief smile that said he’d half expected her to join them. He strode on to the small door of the walkway that led through London Wall beside the gate, and opened that door as well. Peckham had done everything possible to help Wyatt into London.

Isabel saw Sydenham, too. But he did not see her. He was cowering in the recessed doorway of the Belle Sauvage Tavern, his eyes fixed ahead on the gate. Isabel looked up to the roofs on one side of the street, then the other. There were ladders, and there was scaffolding on the rooftops, but there were no archers. She looked out the open gate to empty Fleet Street and felt a surge of hope—no archers anywhere! She could hear the blasts of cannon not far off. Wyatt was coming! She quickly pictured it all. The French had joined Wyatt’s men and helped them cut down the Queen’s army on the way. Wyatt and her father were going to march victorious through the gate Peckham held open for them, to be thronged by cheering Londoners streaming from their houses. It all seemed possible. Wonderfully possible!

There was a drumming of horses’ hooves. Isabel turned. Rounding the corner of Ave Maria Lane, horsemen were galloping toward her, about twenty of them, all wearing the white coats of the loyal London troops. Lord Howard rode at the head, his jowls waggling in fury. “Shut that gate, by order of the Queen!” he cried.

Isabel dashed into an alley by the Belle Sauvage and turned to look back just as the horsemen galloped past her. The last glimpse she had of Sydenham was seeing him cram himself, white-faced, further into the tavern’s entrance.

“The gate stays open!” Henry Peckham cried. His men had drawn their swords and stood firm in their defensive line. There were at least twice as many of them as Whitecoats.

But as the last of the horsemen thundered past Isabel, a mob of armed loyalist citizens ran after them, joining them. The street shook with the thud of feet and hooves. Among the citizens, Isabel caught sight of the broad red face of Master Legge of the Crane. Legge, like the others with him, was out to defend his property from rebel plunder. These loyalist citizens, numbering at least as many as Peckham’s group, swarmed up beside Howard’s Whitecoats, ready to fight with them. Howard raised his sword. “Down with the traitors!” he cried.

His loyalist faction set upon Peckham’s faction. The two groups raged at one another with swords, pikes, daggers, and fists. Men slashed, kicked, gouged, and rolled in the mud. Isabel peered out from the alley, holding her breath. While the two factions skirmished, the gate remained open.

Another sound of tramping feet made Isabel twist back. John Grenville was riding down Ave Maria Lane toward the fracas and behind him ran a string of men. Each wore on his breast the Grenville badge of three green towers, and each had a longbow and a quiver slung on his back. The famed Grenville archers.

Grenville reined in his mount well back of the skirmish at the gate and motioned to his archers. They raced to either side of the street. Isabel pressed her back against a doorway in the alley, for she dared not look out and be seen by Grenville, but she could hear the scuffling of the archers as they climbed the scaffolding up to the roof of the Belle Sauvage, and she could see, across the street, that they were scrambling up the ladder to the flat roof above the gatehouse, too.

“Sturridge!” The frantic voice was Sydenham’s. “Giles Sturridge! Stop!”

“Sir Edward?” came the reply from near the scaffold.

“A hundred pounds, did I say? Make it two hundred. No, five! Five hundred pounds if you kill Thornleigh.”

“Done, Sir Edward,” the archer said eagerly.

Isabel stiffened against the door and a jutting nail dug into her back like an arrow.

A cry from an archer on the gatehouse roof rose above the skirmishing among Howard’s and Peckham’s men. “I can see the rebels! They’re at Temple Bar! They’re almost here!”

Isabel gasped. Heedless of Grenville, she looked out around the corner. The two fighting factions at the gate suddenly stood still, apparently dumbfounded that the moment was at last upon them. Wyatt was coming. And the gate still stood wide open.

Isabel’s eyes flashed up at the archers, then down at the uncertain faces of Howard’s Whitecoats and citizens. Would they all remain loyal at the final moment, or would they rush over to join Wyatt as she’d seen Norfolk’s army of Whitecoats do at Rochester? She looked straight ahead at the gate opening. Her father was about to come marching through it. She could not entrust her hopes to a mass defection. Even if every Whitecoat went over, even if Legge and his citizen comrades threw down their arms, even if the mass of archers refused to fire on Wyatt’s soldiers, the man named Sturridge would surely loose the fatal arrow—for five hundred pounds. Her father’s only hope of survival was for Lord Howard to shut the gate.

Isabel rocked back against the alley door, appalled at the choice that lay before her. If Ludgate was closed, Wyatt and his cause would be lost. But if the gate stayed open, her father would surely die.

Wyatt’s cannon kept pounding the slope at Charing Cross above the Earl of Devon’s nervous horsemen.

“They are firing high!” Carlos shouted to the horsemen, slashing his hand in a line above his own head in illustration. “See? Always high.”

The cannon roared on, but the horsemen relaxed somewhat, and soon, with Wentworth’s help, Carlos brought the troop back to order. They sat their horses, waiting for his command.

Carlos looked down the Strand toward London where Wyatt’s small army, having left a troop to keep firing the cannon, could be seen marching on. Carlos had to strain to see them. Soon they’d be out of sight. And soon after that they would reach Ludgate. He took a long look at his anxious men. If he was going to act, it had to be now.

He lifted his sword and pointed it at the sky. Slowly, he lowered the sword tip toward Wyatt. He kicked his horse’s flanks. “Charge!” he yelled.

His horse bounded forward into a gallop. Carlos lowered his torso over the horse’s neck and tightened his legs against its sides and tore down the slope toward the road. For several moments he was riding alone. Then he heard them, the pounding hooves of sixty horses racing down the hill behind him—the familiar, thrilling thunder of a cavalry charge. Carlos’s breathing settled into a quickened but steady rhythm.

He galloped past Temple Bar and saw them ahead on Fleet Street: Wyatt’s army. They were marching past houses and laneways, lulled at having passed so far unmolested. Then one of them, a young soldier at the rear, heard the thunder of the hooves and he turned and shouted something. Several more twisted around.

“Lieutenant!” Carlos commanded, veering at a gallop to the right of the column while pointing his sword to the left. Wentworth, following the order, cut to the left. Suddenly acting with the assurance of men well led, half the cavalry galloped after Carlos and the rest followed Wentworth. They fanned out along Wyatt’s column like the arms of a nutcracker. Then they set upon Wyatt’s stunned men.

Wyatt’s soldiers tried to defend themselves but they were no match for quick-maneuvering cavalry who could wield lethal swords from the height of their mounts. A young soldier screamed as his back was ripped open by a horseman’s slashing blade. Another kneeled in the mud in terror with his arms wrapped over his head. Two horsemen galloped after a soldier running away. The running man was knocked down by the first horse, and the following horseman crushed the fallen man’s ribcage under one merciless hoof.

Carlos galloped ahead to the vanguard where a bearded man sat his horse and shouted orders. It had to be Wyatt. Carlos counted six other mounted officers, all looking slightly dazed, but none near Wyatt. Carlos galloped forward, his sword outthrust. He wanted to take Wyatt alive. The reward would be greater.

Foot soldiers staggered out of Carlos’s way. Wyatt saw him coming. His sword was drawn as well. Carlos tore on, closing the gap between them. But instead of slashing his sword at Wyatt as he passed, or reining up alongside him to fight, Carlos came galloping straight at his side and rammed his horse into Wyatt’s. Wyatt pitched sideways out of his saddle and hit the ground.

The two horses whinnied in pain and danced awkwardly to find their balance. Carlos slapped the flat side of his sword on Wyatt’s horse’s rump. The animal bounded away. Carlos wheeled again, then rode back toward Wyatt who had staggered to his feet. Carlos galloped forward and was almost on him when Wyatt suddenly toppled to the ground. Carlos saw that a man had thrown himself at Wyatt’s legs, knocking him down to save him. It was Richard Thornleigh.

Carlos wheeled again, about to try once more to get back to Wyatt, but by now several of Wyatt’s officers and men had crowded around their leader and held swords and pikes outstretched, forming a bristling human armor around him. And Carlos saw one of Wyatt’s horsemen barreling toward him. He realized he could not reach Wyatt. He was alone here without the backup of infantry—he had hoped that Pembroke would have rushed in to cover his attack, but there was no sign of Pembroke. So he veered away and galloped back toward the center of Wyatt’s company.

Or what was left of it. Scores of Wyatt’s men lay writhing and gasping in the mud. Carlos’s horsemen continued to cut them down with ferocity but with little organization. Despite Carlos’s earlier yelled order that they flank Wyatt’s entire column, most of the horsemen had got no further than the middle of it before plowing in to attack. The result was that the horsemen were embroiled in a melee with Wyatt’s center, while his rear guard was escaping and his vanguard was running forward to Ludgate.

Suddenly, five of Wyatt’s mounted officers bore down on Carlos’s horsemen in a bid to let their vanguard escape. Carlos managed to turn his men to this attack, chiefly by leading it with his own slashing sword. Enmeshed in this fray, Carlos glanced toward Wyatt’s vanguard. Wyatt was leading them, on the run, toward London Wall a quarter mile in the distance. Carlos could just make out Ludgate itself. He was shocked at what he saw there. Were the doors really standing wide open?

A pike seared across his thigh, ripping his breeches and tearing his skin. He twisted back to see the foot soldier readying to strike again. Carlos slashed his sword across theman’s throat. As the man toppled, Carlos cursed himself for having looked away. The pain in his thigh was hot as pitch, and blood was already soaking his knee, but the pike had not cut deeply into muscle. He went back into the fight against Wyatt’s officers. When it was done, two of the officers were dead, two had been unhorsed and lay wounded. The last one was fleeing at a gallop behind a veil of churned-up mud.

Hundreds of the men of Wyatt’s rearguard were fleeing too. They headed in every direction. Some were running back the way they had come, many were disappearing behind houses and down the lanes that led to the river.

But Carlos was concerned only with Wyatt. The rebel leader, with about three hundred of his men left, was rushing on, very close to Ludgate.

Inside Ludgate the two factions, Lord Howard’s loyalists and Henry Peckham’s rebels, had fallen back to fierce fighting. Howard’s men had advanced a little toward the gate, and the archers’ arrows from the roofs had taken their toll of Peck-ham’s men. But the archers had to be restrained in their fire, finding it difficult to separate rebel from royalist in the hand-to-hand fighting below them. Amid this confusion, Peck-ham’s men were stoutly maintaining their defensive line at the gate.

Isabel pushed away from the alley wall and moved out around the corner. Bodies lay strewn in the mud like discarded rags. The wounded were crawling or staggering away toward the sides of the street. Isabel caught a glimpse of Legge near the gate, holding a man in a vicious headlock. She saw Peckham throttling a gasping man on his knees. She saw Grenville, still on horseback, hacking his sword at a man with a pike. She saw Sydenham, still cowering in the tavern doorway.

And Ludgate still stood open.

Isabel looked up at the archers on the roof of the Belle Sauvage. The strong sun, climbing to its noonday zenith, made silhouettes of their bodies. They stood with legs apart, their arrows fitted in their bows and the bowstrings pulled taut to their chests, forming a frieze of deadly potential.

Isabel could hold back no longer.

She raced toward Legge as he dragged the man he was fighting down to the earth. A tall comrade of Legge’s kicked the fallen man.

“Master Legge!” she shouted.

He looked up in astonishment. “Isabel! What in God’s—”