Trinity (30 page)

‘I will,’ he said, breathing deeply with his lips pressed against her hair. He could feel her tremble beneath his touch. ‘Whisht! Have no fear for me, love! I have three thousand men – and York, two thousand more. Our son will bring twenty hundred in their red coats, almost half that number from his Calais garrison. Seven thousand, Alice! And not country men more used to scythes and mattocks, but good soldiers in mail. An iron knife, my love, to strike or block the queen’s forces. Have we not been called to a Great Council in Coventry? By the king’s own order, I have his permission to march my army across the land, more fool them for allowing it. We will not move by night, but in the day, a gathering at the king’s command. I tell you, before the first frosts, I shall break these enemies. I will rout them and scatter them like the weak seed of a weak line that they are. On my honour, Alice, I will.’

The sea was twenty miles behind, though Warwick could still smell it in his clothes, that mixture of ancient damp and clean salt that somehow never failed to raise his spirits. His skin had been lashed with spray on the crossing from France and he could taste the bitterness on his bare forearm. In the ring of torches, he raised a pewter flagon and cheered with the men as Edward of March sent another growling knight crashing on to his back. Their first evening on English soil for almost four years had been much longer for the six hundred Calais men. Some of them had wept or danced as they reached the land of their fathers, reaching down to touch and pat it or gather up a scrap of dust to put in a pouch. They had suffered through the fall of France ten years before, as well as entire seasons without pay, when all England seemed to be about to go up in flames. They were not young, any of them, but grizzled veterans to a man, too long denied the comforts of home to remember any softness. Their captain, Andrew Trollope, had been forced to knuckle tears out of his eyes when Warwick told him he would travel home at last.

Warwick watched with pleasure as York’s son ducked a wildly swinging staff and hooked a man’s leg with his free hand, heaving him up to send him staggering into two more. There was always danger in a mêlée, even one with wooden staffs rather than spiked maces or blades. Yet at a few months shy of eighteen, the Earl of March made more experienced knights look like children – and the watching men loved him for it, cheering each blow. Warwick could hear Edward laughing in his helmet, the sound of it surprisingly loud and deep for such a young man. Not for the first time, Warwick looked forward to seeing York’s face when he first caught sight of the giant his son had become. Standing four inches over six feet and with a huge frame, Edward overtopped even the legendary height of his namesake, the king known as ‘Longshanks’. Warwick had been forced to employ the best armourers in France, just to encase the earl in iron as he grew. Yet where other boys might have been weakened by such a surge of growth, March had come to his manhood amongst the Calais veterans, training with them every day and learning every vicious trick they could teach for the field of war.

Warwick could see the young earl’s two most loyal companions cheering with the rest, watching each move with expert eyes. The smith, Jameson, was one of the biggest men Warwick had ever seen, though even he had to look up at March when they met. Sir Robert Dalton had taken over the sword exercises of the entire Calais garrison, claiming he had never seen such rust and sloth in all his life. Their loyalty to the son of York was visible and obvious, mingled with pride as they watched him fight. The earl would be a terror in war, Warwick was certain of that. He stood head and shoulders above most full-grown men and could strike with such force that one blow was usually enough.

At Warwick’s side, Captain Trollope was grinning merrily, already drunk on the ale and mead they had found in the first tavern on the coast that morning. The Calais men had come forward quickly enough then to roll the barrels along the street as they left the sea at their backs.

‘No one bets against him, any longer,’ Trollope said, raising his mug and clinking it against Warwick’s. ‘Your health, my lord. I won a fair bit at first, but now? Not even when he takes on three or four.’

The last of the struggling knights saw an opportunity to grip the leg of the young earl. He dived at it, only to find himself lifted entirely into the air and dumped with a crash of metal that left him stunned. His hands waved feebly, like a beetle turned on to its back. The crowd of soldiers shouted their appreciation and Warwick had to smile as March came staggering over to slump with a crash on to the grass beside him. He was panting, heat coming off him in waves as if they sat too close to an oven. Warwick saw Sir Robert and Jameson rise from their place in the circle of torches to join their young charge. He signalled for fresh flagons of ale for all three.

York’s son wrestled with his helmet and complained with a muffled voice that the thing had buckled. He brought more and more strength to bear on it until the metal squeaked and something snapped, revealing his flushed face and a mane of wild black hair.

‘By God, I thought that would never come off! I’ll need to have the armourer look it over before I wear it again. Did you see, Richard? Captain Trollope? Ah, Sir Robert! Sit by me, if you would. Did you see that last one? I could have thrown him over a barn. He almost had my leg though, if he’d been strong enough to lift it.’

Warwick could smell ale on the earl’s breath, sweet and strong, as he panted. He passed a full flagon into the armoured hands, watching with amusement as Edward sank it to the dregs and then folded his lips in to catch the froth. It was odd to look up at a man when they were both sitting. Since his last burst of growth, Edward had begun to carry a weight of muscle that made experienced warriors want to look at their feet in his presence. Combined with his youth, it might have made him terrifying, if not for his good nature. Trollope had compared him more than once to one of the Calais mastiffs – huge dogs brought over from England as a breeding line a century or so before. The massive beasts had no malice in them, perhaps because no other dog could make them afraid.

While Warwick fretted over the letters from his father that had called him home, York’s eldest son seemed to think it all a grand adventure, rooted in his desire to see his father and mother once again. Warwick blinked as March gave out a great belch, wondering if he should perhaps remind him that the manners of a garrison might not do in courtly circles. Warwick shook his head with a wry smile. At thirty, he was not Edward’s father, nor the father of any young man, though he might have wished it so. He had two daughters in the care of his wife and when he looked at York’s great plough-horse of a son, it was hard not to feel a twinge of regret. He put the sadness aside. There was time yet to breed a clutch of boys and, in truth, Edward was more like a younger brother, looking to Warwick for approval in everything he did.

Warwick and Captain Trollope exchanged an amused glance as the earl downed another two flagons as large as the first, slopping beer down his chin and chest.

‘We’ll be up and marching early, Edward,’ Warwick said, despite his better judgement. ‘You’ll be hard-pressed to keep your seat with so much ale in you.’

‘I have a rare thirst, is all,’ he replied, signalling for a fourth to be brought to him. ‘It dries the throat to be heaving men into the air.’

Warwick chuckled, giving up. From experience, he knew the next day would find the earl groaning and demanding to know why they hadn’t stopped him, though the truth was that he was never easy to stop, in anything he chose to do. For all Edward’s good cheer, he had a temper well bridled and checked in him. Men sensed it as they edged away from his presence. Like a Calais mastiff, no one with any sense ever wanted to see that temper unleashed.

To Warwick’s surprise, Edward turned his fourth flagon over on the grass and waved away the servant who would have refilled it yet again.

‘Very well, enough. My senses swim and I will not be the laggard who holds us back tomorrow. How many days to Ludlow, before I see my father?’

‘Eight or ten, depending on the ground,’ Warwick replied. ‘The roads are good and we can make twenty miles a day, more if we cut west past London.’

‘It will be eight, then,’ the young man said, closing his eyes for a moment as the ale made him dizzy. ‘My father needs these men and I will stand with him. I’ll set the pace, Warwick. You’ll just have to match me.’

Warwick accepted the boast without comment, knowing March was more than capable of making good on it. The archivists at Calais had explained what Attainder meant. The threat to the house of York could be made to encompass the Earl of March as much as his father. The estates and incomes Edward already owned could be taken, as well as the more grievous wound of being denied the name of York and the dukedom he hoped to inherit.

Captain Trollope shifted, easing legs grown stiff as he sat. At fifty years of age, he felt old and about as moss-covered as a mountain compared to Warwick and the son of York. Yet the two young men had brought him home to England and he was intensely grateful for it.

‘I pray, my lords, that this Attainder can be struck down without recourse to arms. We heard of St Albans, even in France, how York saved the king from his dark counsellors, wrenching him from their grip and bringing him to the abbey for sanctuary. It was a noble deed. The king’s father would have loved the man who saved his son, I do not doubt it.’

‘You knew King Harry?’ Warwick said, raising his eyebrows.

The captain shook his head.

‘I was but a boy when he died, my lord, though I wish I had. There was never so fine a man as old King Hal, who won France for us.’

‘Though men like Somerset and Suffolk lost it, just as surely,’ Warwick replied. ‘The truth is as I have told you. This King Henry is just a boy, for all he wears a man’s frame. He is surrounded by courtiers and lords who act in his name, each one a king as it pleases him. My father Salisbury saw the truth of it when he broke Percy and Somerset. Now they have grown bold once again, coxcombs teased and plucked upright by a French queen.’

Captain Trollope flushed and looked away rather than reply. In normal times, Queen Margaret was held beyond all blame or censure, considered to be far above the sordid manoeuvres of the lords and courtiers of England. Even the suggestion of a criticism made the captain uncomfortable. Before Warwick could smooth his ruffled sensibilities, Edward spoke. After so much ale, his voice was too loud, though he did not open his eyes.

‘If Attainders are to be issued, it should be against Percy, Egremont and Somerset. Our fathers took the heads of serpents, but their sons have replaced them. Better to have burned those names from the Rolls, so they could not rise again. I will not make that mistake, when this is done.’ He opened his eyes then, red-rimmed and glaring at the men around him. ‘My father saved the king and will again, but he showed mercy to houses that should have been attainted and broken.
I
will not.’

A moment of silence followed and Warwick pressed his lips tight, though the young man’s arrogant speech irritated him sorely. To his surprise, it was Captain Trollope who answered.

‘The Englishmen of Calais will stand with you, my lords. We have given that oath. Not against the king of course, which would be its own treason, but certainly against those who use his name.’

Warwick saw the concern in the older man, overwhelmed by all the talk of politics and noble houses. Nothing was as simple as a clear enemy to be faced and crushed.

‘King Henry will not take the field,’ Warwick said firmly. ‘He is like a child, or a monk, given to prayer and sleep from sunrise to darkness. You need have no fear for your loyalties or your oaths, while King Henry sleeps safe in Kenilworth. All that lies ahead is to meet and vanquish those who would rule in his name, as you say. We will go to Ludlow and they will come to us. It will be a hard and bloody business, but we’ll be standing when it’s done.’

‘We’ll destroy them,’ Edward added, lying back on the ground and yawning. ‘And York will go on. I will remember my friends then – and my enemies.’

The messenger reached Kenilworth in the middle of the night, rousing the castle and bringing Queen Margaret from her bed. Still in a sleeping robe, she met the young man in the audience hall, standing with her hair bound and her face creased and pink from sleep.

‘Your Highness, I have word from Baron Audley. I was told to say the word “Retribution” to you.’

Despite the tension, Margaret chuckled. She knew only Derry Brewer could have suggested the name of his beloved nag as the password for such a serious business. The messenger looked blankly at her.

‘Speak then,’ she said. ‘It will do.’

The rider was an experienced man. He closed his eyes and recited the words he had been told to memorize rather than risk their interception if they were written down. Unbeknownst to him, another messenger would appear within the hour carrying the same message – Derry’s surety against one of them being lost.

‘Your Highness, Salisbury is moving. He has begun to march south to Ludlow. The Queen’s Gallants will stand in his path, preventing him from joining his men to those of York. The whereabouts of Warwick and March are not yet known. Lord Audley asks respectfully that Buckingham, Percy, Egremont and Somerset are informed and the King’s Gallants are made ready to take the field. Beyond that, God’s blessing and good luck.’

The messenger opened his eyes, sweat streaming from him in relief at having fulfilled his commission.

‘Will you return to Lord Audley’s side?’ Margaret asked. The man nodded, standing up straight despite his weariness. ‘Tell him that the Percys and Somerset are with the King’s Gallants by Coventry, armed and ready to march. Buckingham and my husband will take the field with them. Give Audley God’s blessing and wish him all good fortune. That is all. Now, I would see you fed and rested, but time is short. My steward will find something for you to eat as you ride back.’

‘You are most gracious, Your Highness,’ the messenger replied wearily, closing his eyes once more as he murmured the message to himself, committing it to memory. He left the room at a half-run, leaving Margaret to bite her lip and consider what she would have to say and do to rouse her husband. Henry was the key to it all and he had not worn armour since St Albans.