The rain had lessened to a constant drizzle, but there was mist thick around them when they heard a high voice shouting nearby. Jack had insisted on scouts, though they had only stolen plough horses for them to ride. One of the volunteers was a short, wiry Scot by the name of James Tanter. The sight of the little man perched on the enormous great horse had reduced Paddy almost to tears of laughter when he’d seen it. They all recognized Tanter’s thick brogue yelling a warning through the rain.
Jack roared orders on the instant to ready weapons. Tanter may have been a bitter little haggis-sucker, as Jack called him, but he wasn’t a man to waste breath on nothing either.
They marched on, holding pruning hooks and scythes, shovels and even old swords if they’d come across them or taken them from unfortunate bailiffs. Every man there stared through the grey, looking for shapes that could be an enemy. All noises were muffled, but they heard Tanter shout a curse and his horse whinny somewhere up ahead. Paddy turned back and forth as he walked, straining to hear. He made out small sounds and swallowed nervously.
‘Christ save us, there they are!’ Jack said, raising his voice to a bellow. ‘You see them? Now kill them. Pay a little back of what you’re owed. Attack!’
The lines of men broke into a lurching run through the thick mud, the ones at the rear watching their mates disappear into the swirling mist. They could see no further than thirty paces, but for Jack Cade and Paddy, that small space was filling with soldiers with good swords and chain mail. They too had been warned by Tanter’s desperate shouts, but there was still confusion in the sheriff’s ranks. Some of them stopped dead on seeing Cade’s men drift like ghosts out of the land in front of them.
With a roar, Cade charged, raising a woodcutter’s axe above his head as he went. He was among the first to reach the sheriff’s soldiers and he buried the wide blade in the neck of the first man he faced. The blow cut deep through mail links and wedged, so that he had to wrench it back and forth to free the blade, spattering himself with gore. Around him, his men were surging forward. Rob Ecclestone wore no armour and held only his razor, but he did bloody work with it, stepping past armoured men with a quick flick that left them gasping and holding their throats. Paddy had a pruning
hook with a crescent blade that he held out flat. He hooked men’s heads with it, pulling them in as the blade bit. The rest were Kentish men for the most part and they’d been angry ever since the French had evicted them. They were angrier still at the English lords who’d connived in it. In that boggy field near Sevenoaks, there was a chance for them to act at last and all Jack’s speeches were as nothing next to that. They were furious men holding sharp iron and they poured forward into the soldiers.
Jack staggered, swearing at a dull pain from his leg. He didn’t dare look down and risk getting his head split at the wrong moment. He wasn’t even sure he’d been cut and had no memory of a wound, but the damned thing buckled under him and he limped and hopped with the line, swinging his axe as he went. He fell behind despite his best efforts, staggering on while the noises of battle receded away from him.
He stepped over dead men and took a careful route around the screaming wounded. It seemed an age of limping along, lost in hissing rain that made the blood on his axe run down his arm and chest. In the mists, it took him a little time to understand no one else was coming against him. The sheriff had sent four hundred men-at-arms, a veritable army in the circumstances. It was easily enough men to quell a rebellion of farmers – unless there were five thousand of them, armed and raging. The soldiers had made bloody slaughter on some of Cade’s Freemen, but in the drizzle and fog, neither side had seen the numbers they faced until there were no more soldiers left to kill.
Jack stood with his boots so clogged he thought it made him a foot taller. He was panting and sweat poured off him, adding to his stink. Still no one came. Slowly, a smile spread across Jack’s face.
‘Is that
it
?’ he shouted. ‘Can anyone see any more of them? Jesus, they can’t all be dead already? Rob?’
‘No one alive here,’ his friend shouted from over on his right.
Jack turned to the voice and through the mist he saw Ecclestone standing alone, with even the Kentish Freemen shying away from him. He was covered in other men’s blood, a red figure in the swirling vapour. Jack shuddered, feeling cold hands run down his back at the sight.
‘Didn’t the sheriff have a white horse on his shield?’ Paddy called from somewhere on Jack’s left.
‘He’d no right to it, but I heard that.’
‘He’s here then.’
‘Alive?’ Jack demanded hopefully.
‘He’d be screaming if he was, with a wound like this one. He’s gone, Jack.’
‘Take his head. We’ll put it on a pole.’
‘I’m not cutting his head off, Jack!’ Paddy replied. ‘Take his shield for your bloody pole. It’s the horse of Kent, isn’t it? It’ll do just as well.’
Jack sighed, reminded once again that the Irishman had some odd qualms for a man with his history.
‘A head sends a better message, Paddy. I’ll do it. You fetch a good pole and sharpen the end. We’ll take his shield as well, mind.’
The lack of an enemy was slowly being understood by his ragged army, so that cheering erupted in patches from them, echoing oddly across the fields and sounding thin and exhausted, despite their numbers. Jack stepped over dozens of bodies to reach Paddy. He looked down on to the white face of a man he’d never met and raised his axe with satisfaction, bringing it down hard.
‘Where next, Jack?’ Paddy said in wonder, looking at the
corpses all around. Blood squelched around his boots, mingling with the rainwater and mud.
‘I’m thinking we have a proper army here,’ Jack said thoughtfully. ‘One that’s been blooded and come through. There’s swords for the taking, as well as mail and shields.’
Paddy looked up from the headless figure that had been the sheriff of Kent. Just the day before, the sheriff had been a man to be feared across the county. The Irishman looked at Jack in dawning astonishment, his eyes widening.
‘You aren’t thinking o’ London? I thought that was just fighting talk before. It’s one thing to take down a few hundred sheriff’s men, Jack!’
‘Well, we did it, didn’t we? Why not London, Paddy? We’re thirty or forty miles away, with an
army
. We’ll send a few lads to get the lay of the land, to see how many brave soldiers they have to man the barricades. I tell you we’ll never have a chance like this again. We can make them clean out the courts, maybe, or give us the judges to hang, like they hung my son. My boy, Paddy! You think I’m done yet? With an axe at their throats, we can force them to change the laws that took him from me. I’ll make you free, Paddy Moran. No, sod that. I’ll make you a bleedin’ earl.’
William de la Pole stepped gingerly on to the docks, feeling his bruises and his years. Everything ached, though he had taken no wound. He still remembered a time when he could fight all day and then sleep like the dead, just to rise and fight again. There hadn’t been the pains in his joints then, or a right arm that felt as if he had something sharp digging into the shoulder, so that every movement sent shudders through him. He remembered too that a victory washed it all away. Somehow, seeing your enemies dead or fleeing made the body heal faster, the pain less vicious. He
shook his head as he stood on the dock and looked out over the fishing town of Folkestone, grey and cold in the wind off the sea. It was harder when you lost. Everything was.
The arrival of his ship had not gone unnoticed or unremarked by the fishing crews of the town. They’d gathered in their dozens on the muddy streets and it wasn’t long before his name was being shouted among them. William saw their anger and he understood it. They held him responsible for the disasters across the narrow Channel. He didn’t blame them; he felt the same way.
There was mist on the sea in the cold morning light. He couldn’t see France, though he felt Calais looming at his back as if the fortress town was just a step away across the brine. It was all that remained, the last English possession in France beyond some scrubland in Gascony that wouldn’t survive a year. He’d come home to arrange ships to take his wounded, as well as for the miserable task of reporting a French victory to his king. William rubbed his face hard at the thought, feeling the bristles and the cold. Gulls dipped and wheeled in the air all around and the wind bit through him as he stood there. He could see fishermen pointing in his direction and he turned to the small group of six guards he’d brought home, all as battered and tired as he was.
‘Three of you bring the horses out of the hold. The rest of you keep your hands on your swords. I’m in no mood to talk to angry men, not today.’
Even as he spoke, the small crowds of locals were growing as others came out of the inns and chandlery shops along the seafront, responding to the news that Lord Suffolk himself was there in the town. There were more than a few present who had come home from France in the previous few months, then stayed on the coast with no coin to take them further. They looked like the beggars they’d become,
ragged and filthy. Their thin arms jabbed the air and the mood was growing uglier by the minute. William’s guards shifted uneasily, glancing at each other. One of them shouted to the others to look brisk in the hold, while the other two gripped their sword hilts and hoped to God that they wouldn’t be rushed in an English port after surviving war in France.
It took time to break apart the wooden stalls in the bowels of the ship, then blindfold each of the mounts and bring them safely over the narrow walkway to the stone dock. The tension eased in William’s men as each animal was saddled and made ready.
Beyond the gulls and fishermen, one man came running out of a tavern, passing quickly through the crowds and making straight for the docks. Two of William’s guards drew swords on him as he approached and the man skidded to a stop on the cobbles, holding empty hands up.
‘Pax, lads, pax! I’m not armed. Lord Suffolk?’
‘I am,’ William replied warily.
The man breathed in relief.
‘I expected you two days back, my lord.’
‘I’ve been delayed,’ William said irritably.
His retreat to Calais had been one of the worst experiences of his life, with baying French pikemen at their heels the whole way. Half his army had been slaughtered, but he hadn’t abandoned his archers, not even when it looked as if they’d never make it to the fortress. Some of them had taken riderless horses, or run alongside, holding loose stirrups. It was a small point of pride amongst the failure, but William hadn’t left them to be tortured and torn apart by the triumphant French knights.
‘I bear a message, my lord, from Derihew Brewer.’
William closed his eyes for a moment and massaged the bridge of his nose with one hand.
‘Give it to me, then.’ When the man remained silent, William opened his bloodshot eyes and glared at him. ‘Well?’
‘My lord, I think it is a private message.’
‘Just … tell me,’ he said, weary beyond belief.
‘I am to warn you there are charges of treason waiting in London, my lord. Sir William Tresham has sent men to Portsmouth to arrest you. I am to say, “It’s time to run, William Pole.” I’m sorry, my lord, those are the exact words.’
William turned to his horse and checked the belly strap with a dour expression, slapping the animal on the haunch and then tightening it carefully. The servant and his guards all waited for him to say something, but he put a foot in a stirrup and mounted, casting a glance at the crowd, who had not yet dared to approach and truly threaten him. He placed his scabbard carefully alongside his leg and took up the reins before looking down at his guards.
‘What is it?’ he demanded.
The guards looked helplessly up at him. The closest cleared his throat.
‘We were wondering what you intended, my lord Suffolk. It’s grave news.’
‘I intend to honour my commission!’ William said curtly. ‘I intend to return to London. Now mount up, before these fishermen find their nerve.’
The messenger was gaping, but William ignored the man. The news had sickened him, but in truth it changed nothing, whatever Derry may have thought. William tensed his jaw as his men mounted their horses. He would not be a coward. He kept his back stiff as he walked his horse,
walked
it by God, past the fishermen. Some stones were thrown, but they didn’t touch him.
Thomas Woodchurch watched the Duke of Suffolk ride by. He’d seen William de la Pole before at a distance and he knew that iron hair and upright carriage, though the nobleman had lost a great deal of weight since then. Thomas scowled as some fool threw a stone. His angry expression was noticed by some fishermen nearby, watching the proceedings.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ one of them called. ‘Old Jack Cade’ll get ’im, God’s as witness.’
Thomas turned sharply to the speaker, a grizzled old man with wiry hands and arms that were marked in white net scars.
‘Jack
Cade
?’ he demanded incredulously, taking a step closer.
‘Him who ’as an army of free men. They’ll settle yon fancy genn’lman, with his nose in the air while better men starve.’
‘Who’s Jack Cade?’ Rowan asked.
His father ignored him, reaching out and taking the boatman by the shoulder.
‘What do you mean, an army? Jack Cade from Kent? I knew a man by that name once.’
The boatman raised thick eyebrows and smiled, revealing just a couple of teeth in an expanse of brown gum.
‘We’ve seen a few come through to join ’im, last month or so. Some of us ’as to fish, lad, but if you’re of a mind to break heads, Cade’ll take you.’
‘Where is he?’ Thomas demanded, tightening his grip on the arm as the man tried to pull away and failed.
‘’E’s a ghost, lad. You won’t find ’im if ’e don’t want it. Go west and north, that’s what I heard. He’s up the woods there somewhere, killing bailiffs and sheriff’s men.’
Thomas swallowed. The wound on his hip still hurt, the healing slowed by starvation and sleeping each night on the shore in the wind and rain. He and Rowan had been eating
fish guts on fires of driftwood, whatever they could find. He hadn’t even a coin to send a letter to his wife and daughters – and if he had, he’d have bought a meal with it. His eyes brightened as if his fever had returned.