When the Clarence captains returned to their lines, there was an immediate lurch forward. They carried their pikes and weapons aloft on shoulders, rather than pointed out in hostile array.
Edward saw his brother George was standing disconsolately, deprived of his command and still unsure of his new place with his brother the king of England. With a visible effort, Edward spoke to him again, putting aside his disdain.
‘You’ll prove yourself, George, I don’t doubt. You are our father’s son, just as I am. Just as Richard is. Don’t forget that.’
‘I won’t,’ George replied and to Richard’s astonishment, he sobbed suddenly, dipping his head into the crook of his elbow so that they would not see. Edward stared and Richard spoke to cover the muffled sounds of grief.
‘Come now, Brother. Mount up before your men see you … We’ll stop here and eat, perhaps …’ He broke off as Edward shook his head in answer.
‘No. Coventry is just five or six miles away. We still have Montagu shadowing us behind. When the new men are settled and arranged in column, we’ll walk there, today. Stay at my side, George, would you? You can tell me all you know, before the fighting begins.’
George blinked at the reckless confidence in his older brother. He knew Warwick’s army outnumbered those he saw, three times over, a host of a size that had not been seen since Towton. He had expected Edward to be in command of an army to equal it, just as he had been before. The reality was different enough to make him perspire.
After a moment of silence, George remembered himself. He swallowed his fear and bowed his head, accepting his brother’s authority over him without another word.
Warwick felt a sudden chill of sadness as he stood in spring sunshine. The day was beautiful, the last rags of winter blown away so that the sun warmed a green earth and brought back a sense of life and desire, thinning the blood and making all things well.
He leaned forward, hunching his shoulders atop the Coventry walls. A tower loomed over him on his right and he considered walking up that last flight of steps to see to the furthest point. The bricks in the tower’s shadow were still damp as he laid his hand on them, though they would grow warm as the day ended. Some part of him observed his reactions, thinking how strange it was that he could be aware of the roughness of stone while the banners of York were still lurching into view, at the head of an army. Warwick had thought they were a hundred miles to the north, building the great force Edward would surely need to reclaim all he had lost. It was nothing less than madness for the sons of York to have raised war banners before they had the numbers to support them. Yet Warwick felt cold clutch at him.
The banners of Clarence lay alongside those of York and Gloucester. Three brothers together – and one more knife thrust into Warwick’s side to cause him pain. As he looked out from Coventry’s wall over the fields around, he thought
of how his daughter would react when she heard. He grieved as a father for her then.
Warwick himself had gone to King Edward to ask permission for that marriage. It was he who had counselled the giddy young lovers to elope to France and gone with them. It had been Warwick who rode to save George and Isabel when Edward’s wrath turned on them and they had to run.
Braced on stone, Warwick pulled in enormous breaths, filling himself with clean air above the winding streets and cooking fires of the city. He had seen their child, his grandchild, born at sea and named, only to die unbaptized in the salt spray. It was King Edward’s orders that had prevented their little boat from landing in Calais. It was the fleet of Lord Rivers that had hunted them on the south coast of England and had driven them out.
Warwick dragged the steel knuckles of his gauntlet back and forth across the brick, scoring deeper and deeper, unnoticed, unfelt. He had known Edward when he was just a great bullock of a lad, delighted to fight and drink and whore with the garrison at Calais. Edward of March he had been then, and he had accepted Warwick’s guidance, the young man wise enough to see something worth learning in him. So it had seemed. Warwick had been Edward’s guide, his teacher. He knew he was responsible in some part for the man Edward had become. He was not responsible for all he had become. The young king had married poorly and perhaps there had always been weaknesses in him, as in marble that seemed strong, but shattered at the touch of a chisel. Or perhaps the weaknesses would never have shown if Warwick had not helped him to reach for the throne, to stretch out his hand and touch a crown Edward had not earned and surely did not deserve. They had deposed a saint and Edward had become king in blood and vengeance. Perhaps his sins had rotted him. Or his pride.
Warwick scratched the metal joints harder across the stone, wanting to destroy something, wanting to leave a mark. He wished Derry Brewer could have been there to advise him. He had grown used to the man’s scorn and found it oddly comforting.
Edward Plantagenet was on the field once more. Anyone who remembered Towton or had survived Mortimer’s Cross would feel a twinge of fear at that news. Warwick could not deny it in himself, as he watched the army of York tramp forward in well-spaced ranks, spreading as wide as the city itself. Over a thousand yards of them in the front rank and God alone knew how many stretched behind.
On sudden impulse, Warwick turned to the watch tower and climbed quickly up the steps inside. In moments, he reached an octagonal crest that allowed him to see miles further over the great flat plain in the heart of England. It was land Caesar himself would have allowed was a place to give battle. Warwick felt his heart thumping faster. He saw Edward had not gathered the vast host that he had feared. Clarence had given him three thousand – and denied as many to Warwick by that betrayal. Even then, Edward’s army was no more than ten, perhaps eleven thousand men.
Warwick could remember standing before the hill at St Albans, staring across roads blocked with thorns and broken furniture. He and his father had stood with Richard, Duke of York, and between them they’d mustered only three thousand men, a force that would be dwarfed by those of later days. Warwick knew the merchant guilds complained that trade had suffered and the country had grown poorer as a result, that they made weapons and raised men for slaughter, rather than iron and pewter – and mutton, beef and pork. War had hurt them all and as Warwick looked over the standing ranks, he thought of his father and was pleased the breeze
was there to dry the brightness that came to his eyes. They were good men, those who had gone. Better than all those poor bastards they left behind.
He watched, dragging the same gauntlet across a block as Edward of York rode forward with his two brothers and half a dozen knights in armour, banners streaming out. Edward and Richard both wore long surcoats over their armour, the sword belts sitting over quarters of glorious colours: red and blue and gold, lions and fleurs-de-lis. The banners were a fine mixture of York and Gloucester and Clarence, a calculated display: the house of York returned and united against him. In many ways it was more for those who stared down from the walls than Warwick himself.
His own banners flew above his head, facing them. Warwick glanced up at the colours of his shield and thought how strange it was that every man in command that day was a member of the same order of chivalry. York, Gloucester, Clarence, Hastings, Warwick himself, his brother Montagu edging down from the north – all were members of the Order of the Garter, with the legend embroidered around their family crests: ‘
Honi soit qui mal y pense
’ – ‘Evil be to him who evil thinks’.
Warwick found his eyes blurring and he blinked, pleased that there was no one else to see and think him weak. He had been a tutor to Edward, and then to his brother Richard, when he had lived at Middleham Castle as Warwick’s ward. They had been fast friends once and it was cruel to see them arrayed against him. The worst was Clarence, a wound so fresh it hurt him with every taken breath. In all, Warwick felt as a father denied by his sons and the pain struck right to the heart of him.
For the first time in his life that he could remember, Derry Brewer considered punching an archbishop in the mouth. He could almost feel the muscles twitching along his arms and chest. A nice little jab with the left, then drop the cane and bring the right cross in. George Neville was no white-livered clergyman, however. The man was burly and about as angry as Derry himself at being baulked. The king’s spymaster knew that if he threw a punch, they would be scuffling on the floor like two schoolboys in moments, all torn collars and bloody lips. He was too old for it, more was the pity.
‘Your Grace,’ he tried once more with exaggerated patience. ‘I am better placed than you to make this judgement. King Henry is not well enough for what you ask. If he was, truly, I would have him wrapped in a good cloak and I would have rushes laid along the street, just as you are asking. But he isn’t. He won’t understand what you want. He might fall. He might cry out, do you follow? It will not help for him to be seen weak!’
‘Where is Beaufort, Duke Somerset? I am weary of your resistance. Send a man to summon Somerset to vouch for me.’
‘My lord Somerset is not in London, Your Grace,’ Derry said for the second time, with deliberately icy patience. He did not say that Margaret and her son, Edward of Lancaster, were expected any day and that Somerset had gone to the coast to escort them. That news was about the best-kept secret in the country.
The lack of explanation turned Archbishop Neville an even deeper shade of claret.
‘My brother Warwick trusts you, Master Brewer. That is the only reason I have not summoned guards to have you removed from my path. I am a prince of the Church, sir! I have come here with a dire warning in time of war – and I find myself arguing with a lackey as if I had come to beg for alms? So let me say
this
, sir! It is my considered judgement that London itself lies in peril and with it, King Henry. He
must
be seen, Master Brewer! Do you understand that much? The people of London know nothing of the greater events in the land,
nothing
. All they hear are alarums and rumours of invasions, of fleets sighted. Is the king dead? Is York returned? Is Margaret of Anjou marching once more on the city that refused her, to
burn it down
? I have heard a dozen speculations just this morning, Master Brewer, and no sign of the truth. I need to show Henry to his people, to reassure them – yes, and to show them for whom they fight. The king is a symbol, Brewer, not just a man.’
‘Your Grace, King Henry is … withdrawn. Until you see him …’ Derry broke off, considering. He held no official role as the keeper of the king’s door, but he had been so long associated with King Henry and so clearly trusted that he had become the final arbiter over who was granted an audience. The Archbishop of York may have been within his rights to call for the king’s own guards, but Derry had a shrewder sense of whether they would fulfil his order or not. He was confident he could have the archbishop thrown out. That was a decision that would surely come back to bite him, however, or even Margaret and her son, whenever they deigned to take ship and actually come home. No one crossed the Church lightly. The easiest path was to give the Neville clergyman what he wanted and let him see he had made a wasted trip into the city.
With a disarming change of expression, Derry bowed to the younger man.
‘Your Grace, perhaps I have overstepped my bounds. If you will follow me, I will bring you to the king’s presence.’
Archbishop Neville wasted no more time on talk and fell in behind as Derry tap-tapped his way along a corridor to the private royal suite beyond. It was Derry who gave the word of the day to the guards there, men who would refuse even him if the correct signal was missed. The king’s spymaster swept on through an audience chamber with four men standing to attention along the walls.
‘Stand easy, gentlemen,’ Derry called airily as he went through. They ignored him as always.
Beyond the public rooms, they came to a final, smaller door, guarded by one old man who had as much chance of stopping armed invaders as a small boy.
‘Old Cecil here has guarded doors for the best part of forty years,’ Derry said.
‘Forty-two, Brewer,’ the man replied, looking down his nose. He appeared to have no love for the king’s spymaster. Derry sighed.
‘And valuable work it is, I am sure. There is no better-guarded door in the kingdom.’
‘Wait here,’ the old man said with a sniff. He knocked and went inside and Derry followed immediately on his heels, making the doorkeeper round on him in spittle-flecked rage. Derry held up his hands.
‘We have discussed this, Master Fosden. The king is not in good health. If I waited on his call, I would be here all night and then where would the kingdom be?’
‘Better off,’ the old man snapped. He bowed his head and muttered ‘Your Grace’ to Archbishop Neville, then left, pulling the door hard shut behind him.
‘Cantankerous old sod,’ Derry said, close enough to the oak to be heard beyond it. ‘I should have his pay docked.’
Archbishop Neville was already crossing the room to where Henry lay in bed, his long hair unbound and spread like a dark halo upon the pillow. He looked white rather than the pale yellow of a corpse, but though the eyes were open, there was precious little life in them.
As Derry looked on, the archbishop approached and dropped to one knee, extending his hand to touch the king’s coverlet, though Henry made no move to take it in his own.
‘I am George Neville, Your Highness, Archbishop of York. I pray each day for your good health,’ the man muttered with bowed head. ‘I pray that you might be well enough to walk the streets once more, to allow the people of London to see you alive. I fear they will turn to York if they do not, in their childlike awe. They know no better, Your Highness.’
Henry sat up in the bed, appearing to listen as he gathered his hair in a long tail, then let it fall loose once more. He had eaten rather better in recent months than during his imprisonment in the Tower, but he was still frighteningly thin, like the carvings of death seen on gravestones and tombs. His bones all showed and Derry saw hope seep slowly out of the archbishop.
‘If you say I must, Your Grace,’ King Henry said suddenly. ‘I am a servant of Christ and my people. I will rise, if I need to.’
Derry cleared his throat.
‘His Highness tends to agree, when earnest men come and say they need him to sign or seal or lend them something so important it will not wait. It would be a cruel thing to take advantage of his nature, Your Grace.’
Archbishop Neville looked from man to king and back,
his gaze remaining on the frail figure sitting up in bed and watching him. He too sensed the absence of a guiding will, for the words he spoke were as much to Derry as the king.
‘Nonetheless, I must ask. This is the crossroad, Your Highness. York has returned to England and he will break the walls and bring all the towers down unless he is stopped. The people of London are afraid – and right to be! If they can see King Henry walk amongst them, with the banners of Lancaster flying overhead, they will know there is still a heart to the city.’
Derry saw Henry nodding along and he winced at the sight as the king looked across the room to him.
‘I would like to do it, Derry,’ he said.
Derry found himself breathing out hard, surprised by grief as his face creased up and he nodded, mastering himself too late.
‘Then I will make it happen, Your Majesty. I’ll walk with you.’ The look Derry turned on the archbishop then was one of cold-eyed fury that made the other man quail.
From the height of the north wall tower, Warwick watched in growing disbelief as a man in royal livery rode forward from the army of York, bearing a horn as long as his arm. Warwick looked down to the walls stretching away on both sides. His own herald waited there to take any reply he might wish to send.
A scrape and echo of metal on stone signalled the arrival of the Duke of Exeter on the tower roof. Warwick nodded to welcome him though in truth he would have preferred to be alone rather than share such a moment. Henry Holland was no great thinker, unfortunately. Just when Warwick needed a good tactician, he had Exeter to stare over the battlements at his side, like a short-sighted bulldog. The man’s lower jaw
actually did jut out further than the one above, giving him an aggressive air that suited the map of broken veins on his cheeks from years of drink.
Some sixty feet below on the plain, the York herald’s voice rang out with all the volume and reach of his profession. Warwick sighed and scratched his head.
‘… a personal challenge on behalf of His Majesty King Edward of York, in answer to injuries and insults borne against his royal person and his line.’
The list of faults was brief enough and Warwick noted the number of times the herald used royal honours and titles. The man made no mention of Edward having lost his crown, as if the house of York wished to pretend it had not happened.
‘Impudent bastard,’ Exeter muttered, peering down. Warwick almost sent him away then. It was not that he had no need of counsel. A choice lay before him that shook him to his foundations. However, he would not be taking that counsel from the Duke of Exeter.
‘De Vere and I have six thousand men a few miles to the east,’ Exeter went on. ‘Your brother Montagu is as close behind, as I heard it. We had Clarence to the west, though that is wasted now of course.’
‘I know very well how and where we all stand, my lord,’ Warwick said, somewhat curtly. Exeter did not miss the prickling scorn and grew a darker shade of purple if anything, leaning in and prodding the air with a finger as he made his points.
‘Will you consider sending a champion? Or will you perhaps go yourself, Neville?’
Warwick controlled a spasm of dislike. Over the best part of two decades, he had fought on both sides of a brutal civil war. It was inevitable that he would encounter men he had
faced as enemies in battle. Some, like Somerset, he respected. Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, he did not. The man was a tyrant with those who were unlucky enough to fall into his power, and a lickspittle with those he considered his superiors. Men like Warwick were somewhere in a middle rank, less clear. Warwick had more land and power, more wealth and experience than Exeter, but always with the knowledge that a duke could command an earl. Exeter was only too aware of such niceties, while Warwick had seen so many things that he hardly thought of rank at all, until perhaps when he was needled by a pink-faced fool.
‘After you, my lord, if you wish,’ Warwick said, indicating the York herald. ‘I am a couple of years older than you – and you could not face him. Edward is at his greatest strength. I do not believe I have a man in the army who could carry my colours down to that field and win. No, I will not give York a life just to increase his own legend. However, my lord, I am
certain
you have pressing duties below. You should ready your captains by the main north gate.’
‘There will be some who’ll call you faint-hearted if you don’t come out, Neville.’
‘Well, I am not concerned with the chatter of fools, Holland,’ Warwick replied sharply. He kept his back turned, but his anger was finding a focus in Exeter rather than the enemy calling him out on the field. It was idiocy to be arguing with one of his own men at such a delicate time.
‘You have ten thousand or so in the city,’ the duke went on stubbornly, ‘but at least as many just a few miles south of here by Warwick Castle. Have you sent a rider to bring them up? I have de Vere, Earl Oxford, and our six thousand out to the east, ready to flank the bastards. So bring ’em in, Neville. Set ’em loose!’
‘I will send my orders to you when I am ready, my lord,’
Warwick said calmly. ‘Not before you have resumed your proper post by the north gate. I believe I have command of the army over you. The army I gathered and paid and fed all winter, while you took your few thousand and did what with them? You took back estates you had lost when Edward sat the throne. You dispossessed your wife who had kept some part for you – and you settled a dozen old scores in murder and torture while you could. I’m sure the results have been to your satisfaction, Holland. I would love to have done the same, instead of taking loans from every monastic house and banker to support the king!’
His voice had grown louder and harder as he spoke and he rounded then on Exeter, stepping in close enough to threaten.
‘Do you understand, Holland? You saw your chance to take vengeance, in spite and ruin. I saw a chance at peace.’
‘Oh yes, you are an admirable fellow, Neville,’ Exeter said, mocking him. ‘And much good has it done you. You’ll find no gratitude from that broken thing that sits in Westminster.’
‘Go down to your men, my lord,’ Warwick said, struggling to master his anger though he thought it would choke him. ‘I will decide whether to sally out or remain.’
‘They will call you coward if you don’t answer York,’ Henry Holland said.
‘
Coward?
’ Warwick snapped, his temper breaking. ‘I fought at
Towton
, you pup! I stood at Edward’s side and I killed men on foot, in snow, with blood across my face and friends cut down on either side of me. I went on until I could hardly
stand
and the darkness came. And still we fought! When Norfolk crashed against the wing, when it was all screaming and dying men.’ He tapped his forehead hard with two steel fingers, leaving a mark. ‘I
still
see it! Ah, you don’t know
anything
.’
Exeter had lost his flush as Warwick ranted in fury, close enough to leave small flecks of spittle on his cheek.
‘I know I stood on the other side,’ he said softly. ‘I know I saw more of my friends and followers killed that day, by you and by York. Worse than any losses you think you have suffered. I know the man you followed that day denied me my estates and my houses and my villeins and my servants. And I know York is out there with an army half the size of yours … and yet he is the one to challenge, while you hide behind walls. I tell you, I like this not at all.’