‘Trunning!’ Thomas gasped in relief. ‘Give me your horse. We have to catch them, ride them down. Balion is done, exhausted. Quick, man, dismount.’
‘That would be a battle order, my lord Egremont. Not the policy and purposes of your father’s house, but a simple matter of which of us gets to ride – and which of us walks. I’m afraid I choose to ride, my lord.’
‘You disloyal …’ Thomas gasped at him. He reached for the man’s reins, but Trunning’s old nag danced away from his grasp. ‘I’ll watch you swing for disobeying me.’
‘Do you think so, my lord? It’s my feeling your father will be more concerned with how many of his men you’ve lost today, without a single Neville head to bring him in exchange. Or did you find one, Baron Egremont? Did you find a good Neville head to tie to your saddle by the hair? I didn’t see one.’
Thomas stayed silent, refusing to answer the man’s barbs with another word. Neither he nor his father could have known Salisbury would bring so many of his best swordsmen with him. Thomas blew air from his puffed cheeks. They had fought well, his mother’s people. All the Nevilles had needed to do was survive his attack, and they had managed that. Thomas knew he and his men must have butchered over a hundred of Salisbury’s best, but as he watched, the armoured core of them moved further and further away, pulling back in good order. A few dozen archers might have stung them then, if he’d kept a reserve. Thomas could only watch glumly as his uncle escaped the trap he’d laid. He swore, panting. He wanted to remove his helmet, but the blood would have stuck it to his hair and scalp in a sodden mass and the thought stayed his hand. Trunning was still there, watching him and munching at his moustache as if it was a feast for a starving man.
‘You can tell your father you fought well, my lord. I won’t give you the lie on that. You nearly reached the old devil himself. I saw.’
Thomas looked up in surprise, half-wondering if this was some subtle taunt. He saw no mockery in Trunning’s expression and shrugged.
‘Not enough though, was it?’
‘Not today,’ Trunning replied. ‘Men trip and fall on their face, that’s the way of things. It doesn’t matter. Who stands at the end, that’s what matters.’
Thomas felt his brow crease as he stood there, amazed that Trunning didn’t seem to hold the lack of a victory against him. He shook his head, making the little man smile.
‘I’ll fetch your horse, my lord,’ Trunning said. ‘I told you when you bought him that he was too big, but he has heart, that one. Blown or not, he’ll carry you home.’
The breeze strengthened as Trunning trotted away. Thomas felt a dozen sharp pains spread in him as his flesh understood it would not fight again and could begin to ache and heal. He had not won, but he had tested himself. To his surprise, he was not ashamed. He raised his hand to anyone who could see, cutting an arc in the air that pointed back the way he had come, a morning and an age before.
5
Thomas could see Alnwick Castle growing steadily ahead of him, the vast pale-yellow fortress dominating the landscape. The sight did not cheer him. After three days on the road, he was both sore and dirty, reeking with old sweat and dried blood. His helmet had come away at last with oil and hot water, but he had a hot, stitched line the length of a finger across his crown and he had only stared when he saw the dent that had caused it. Thomas could feel his spirits sink lower with every step of Balion under him. He had a thousand childhood memories of those pale gold walls, but first and foremost, Alnwick meant the old man. It meant meeting his father.
Heading away from the battlefield, the mood among his men had been almost joyous at first. It was true Salisbury had escaped them, but that was the Percy son’s concern. For the rest, by God, they were survivors, giddy with it. They had come through the terror of the crush, each man there with a dozen stories of personal combat or a crippling gash barely escaped. The first night on the road had been raucous, with great bearded soldiers laughing and miming a cut they’d relished or ducked. One of them had a reed whistle, with holes he’d carved himself. The fellow could coax a lively tune from it and some of the men leaped and danced as if they were drunk. Thomas had considered ordering silence as the sun set. For all they knew, the Nevilles were out hunting them. It had seemed madness to shout their position to the night sky.
Perhaps Trunning had guessed his thoughts from his dark expression. The little man had strutted over, leading Thomas away to have a quiet word.
‘They’ll settle, my lord,’ Trunning had said softly, staring out over the setting sun. His hoarse voice had been almost a purr then, making Thomas’s skin crawl. ‘I have scouts out to watch for anyone a-creeping up on us. We won’t be surprised, I promise you. The lads are just … happy to be alive, my lord, with all fingers counted. Let ’em sing a bit, if you would. The shine in the blood dulls again, soon enough. They’ll wake a little grimmer, a little surly maybe, but they’ll be right as rain in the morning.’
Thomas had only been able to stare. There had been a gentleness in Trunning’s red and mottled face then. To say Thomas had found such an observation surprising hardly did the word justice. If the sun had appeared once more above the horizon, he might have had an equal sense of wrongness in the world. Yet there it was, a glimmer of affection for the red-faced soldiers bawling out some maudlin tune, men who would snap the spine of the first one to suggest there was anything in them but Alnwick stone, blood, bone and their oaths. Thomas had nodded sharply to Trunning and his father’s swordmaster had walked away. Not once had Trunning looked directly at him. The entire speech had been delivered to the air, as if they stood side by side at the same pissing trough.
Those who had been wounded stayed away from the firelight. As they’d left the battlefield, Trunning had ‘found’ a few carts in the first village along their path, though nowhere near enough for the sixty or so men who needed them. The Percy swordmaster had made them all line up for inspection, checking each wound with rough hands and saying ‘Cart’ or ‘Walker’ before moving on to the next. One or two were dying as they stood there, their wounds draining them white and small. Trunning had paused before each of those, his eyes dark as he shook his head. They knew, just as he did. He still let them on the carts, to die in peace.
That first evening could easily have become a feast, if there had been something to eat beyond dried strips of meat in their pouches. As the moon rose, Trunning had decided it was time to call a halt to the chatter, appearing from darkness and snapping at laughing men to get their heads down and save some strength for the morrow. Thomas had wondered then if daylight would bring Neville trackers heaving into view. In the darkness, all his worst fears seemed possible. There was a chance Salisbury would arm for war as soon as he reached a stronghold. Only time would reveal how many soldiers the earl had within reach. The simple truth was that Thomas had thrown a spear at a savage old boar and damn well missed with it.
No Neville soldiers had appeared on their backtrail the next morning, or the one after that. Trunning set guards and checked every watch, seeming to need no more than short naps himself before he was up and away again, marching around the boundary of their little camps. They had been seven hundred, just a week before. Including the wounded, two hundred and forty men remained to walk or ride back into Alnwick.
It was an odd feeling to approach the fortress on the third day, without drummer boys or banners held proudly ahead of them. The townspeople heard them passing, of course, coming out of their homes. Women gathered up skirts to run out to the main road, squinting into the setting sun to see if their men had returned. Thomas set his mouth tight, clenching his jaw as he rode past them. He could not close his ears to the calls back and forth as wives asked desperately about their husbands, and children began to wail for lost fathers. The sight of the men in the carts caused a great keening to go up from the townspeople. By then the wounded were a pitiful collection, hot with fevers, some dead for two days and swollen with wind and rot.
Staring neither left nor right, Thomas rode Balion in, shuddering slightly as he passed the archers’ steps above his head. There were builders working there that evening, perched precariously as they slathered mortar and eased new stones into place.
Thomas saw Trunning’s skinny horse edging ahead of him and added a slight pressure at his heels, so that Balion pushed on in a trot. He didn’t look back as Trunning grunted something under his breath. He was a Percy son and he was Egremont. He would be damned if he’d let anyone else come home to Alnwick before him. No doubt his father was watching from the high windows. Thomas held his chin up, feeling the swollen stripe throb on his scalp as he left the sound of weeping crowds behind and entered the main keep.
Servants rushed to take the reins of his warhorse, transforming the silent yard with their clatter and noise. The returning men were sombre in their replies, shaking their heads again and again in response to questions. Thomas felt his heart thump as he looked up at the tower and saw the old crow wrapped in his furs, staring down.
‘See to the men, Trunning,’ Thomas called. ‘I’ll take the news to my father.’
Salisbury rode with his hands gripping the reins so tightly it spread a dull ache up his arms to add to his bruises. To be forced to run from a Percy enemy was a humiliation that burned so bright it was hard to think at all. A week before, Baron Cromwell had gathered the townsfolk at Tattershall to wave and cheer as his niece Maud left with a new husband and two hundred soldiers. Six days later, they came limping back, fewer than half of those who had left, with too many wounds bound in rough cloth. It was Salisbury’s duty to explain what had happened and to assure the man his niece was unhurt. As Salisbury imagined Cromwell’s reaction, he growled softly, shaking his head like a series of twitches, each one a bitter child of the shame spilling through him.
He could feel the eyes of his wife and son on his back as he led the battered soldiers south towards Tattershall Castle. Local boys raced ahead of him, carrying the news of his return. There was nothing he could do about that and he only glowered, his head low and his breathing harsh. Salisbury knew he brooded when events turned against him. His father had been a man to shrug off the worst setback and go on, waking fresh and able to laugh at his own dark moods. Richard, Earl of Salisbury, had been cut from more sullen cloth. He had known great joys in his life, but even at his moments of triumph there were always deeper threads shifting beneath, twisting his muscles and thoughts in the blackness.
The town lay to the north of the brick castle, standing like a red spear on a hill that had been cut square to hold it. Salisbury looked past the shocked faces of merchants and townsfolk, all coming out to stand and whisper, shaking their heads and crossing themselves. There was work to be done, work he told himself he did not welcome but was vital nonetheless. He had not been able to collect the Neville dead, in the field. To save himself and his remaining men, Salisbury had ordered a withdrawal. Some of the wounded had cried out in disbelief when they saw him go. They’d held up their arms, as if seeing them would bring him back, as if they had only to beckon for Salisbury to return. It all burned in him, an acid that swelled and choked his chest until he thought it must spill from his mouth and burn holes in the bloody gambeson he wore.
Rage. He had not felt the pleasure of the real thing for years, the clean, hot burn that strengthened the arm and built a man’s confidence to a dangerous level. As he rode, he struggled for the calm he would need to plan and prepare, but could not find it. Rage filled him like water into a jug. He would gather his men. He would gather an army – and he would see the Percy strongholds in ashes. Salisbury made his oaths as Tattershall grew before him.
He was not surprised to see riders come out of the main gate before he reached the hill, cantering down the steep slope that separated the castle grounds from the town. Cromwell had trusted his niece’s safety to the head of the Nevilles. The man would be expecting the worst possible news.
Salisbury raised his hand, halting his followers as the first three horsemen drew up and faced him. Ralph Cromwell was not a well man, his face swollen around his collar and too darkly red, though Salisbury knew the surgeons bled him regularly. At sixty, the man’s hair was bone-white and wispy as a babe’s, whipping back and forth over his bald crown in the breeze. The man had ridden out without banners, still wearing a tunic spotted with juices from whatever he had been eating before.
‘My lord Salisbury,’ Cromwell called, though his gaze slid over Richard Neville and searched the others. When the old man’s wet eyes stopped on his niece, Salisbury saw him sag in the saddle, relief in every line of him. He knew then that Cromwell had not been part of the plot. Though the baron was childless, it was well known he doted on his sister’s daughter as if she were his own. Salisbury had been almost certain the man would never have placed her in danger. Yet ‘almost’ had brought him close to striking Cromwell dead. Not many had known Richard Neville had been present at Tattershall. For Salisbury, it was an effort to unclamp his hand from his sword hilt, so hard had he been holding it.
Cromwell’s gaze snapped back, perhaps sensing some of the threat in the dark expressions of the battered group. Salisbury inclined his head in sour greeting.
‘Maud lives, Lord Cromwell. As do my wife and son. As do I. The Percy brigands failed, though they brought three for every one of mine.’
He watched as Cromwell understood, stiffening slightly while his hair waved in the wind like a white flag.
‘Percy?’
Salisbury watched the man’s mouth tighten.
‘It was the dowry manors, then. My lord, I knew their spite, but nothing of their intentions. I swear it on the honour of my house and name.’
‘I hold you innocent, my lord. If I did not, I would not have returned to Tattershall.’