‘Perhaps I have,’ Warwick said faintly, making the man chuckle.
‘That’s what I thought, my lord.’ Wainwright looked to his left as a black ship eased away from the dock, the sail heaved up on to the yard by silent figures.
‘It’s the ships, is it? You’re after the king’s ships?’
Warwick nodded, surprised to hear Wainwright chuckle aloud.
‘They’ll be furious in the morning, I know that much. It seems to me, though, that I’m not going to side with king’s crews. Not when I’ve a chance to pay them back for Cade.’ Wainwright scratched his chin as he thought. ‘And if you need men, my lord, you could do a lot worse than look for them in Kent, that’s all I’m saying. There’s more than me who still bear a grudge or two about that night. There’s some who don’t like what happened at Ludlow, neither.’
‘What of Ludlow?’ Warwick said softly. ‘We left when there was no hope, not before.’ He saw the watchman looked embarrassed.
‘Word is the king’s fine, brave lads were let loose on the village there,’ Wainwright said. ‘Worse than French raiders. It was the talk of the country at Christmas. Ravishment and killing of innocents. Terrible thing. King Henry didn’t stop it, or even try to, so they say. I tell you, my lord. You just call “Kent” when you’re ready and see what happens, that’s all. We don’t like to hear of king’s men killing women and children and that’s the truth. You’ll get more than a few volunteers for a spot of vengeance – and we’re the ones who broached the Tower, don’t forget. We might not have mail-shirts and that, but then a Kentish man don’t need one. He’s in and out quick.’
Salisbury had listened to the exchange without a word. He looked up to the turning stars above and tapped his son on the shoulder.
‘We should go on,’ he murmured. ‘Tie these men and take the last of the ships.’
Even as they’d been talking, the dark rows of cogs and caravelles had thinned like teeth being drawn, more and more of them with ropes hanging loose, easing out on to the deeper waters beyond. No more than half a dozen remained, their lamps snuffed and their decks cleared.
Warwick nodded. He’d been expecting a fight on the docks and was still ready for the sound of church bells across the town. It was time to leave.
‘Thank you, Master Wainwright,’ he said. ‘And I’ll remember what you told me.’
‘You do that, my lord. Kent
will
rise for a good cause. For a bad one too, mebbe, but a good one’s better.’
It took only a short time to truss the six watchmen. With apologies, Warwick had two of his soldiers add a set of bruises to the faces of a couple of them, though he spared Wainwright that. It was only an hour or two to dawn and he knew the watchmen would be found at first light, with a bloody nose or two for show.
Warwick sent his father and March to different ships, each taking command of a small crew. He waited to the very last before leaping on to the final vessel and taking position at the tiller to steer her out. The tide was turning and it took only half a dozen men to raise the single sail and catch the morning breeze. They left a long and empty length of dock behind them, and Warwick looked back and laughed as he went.
The waves were less calm beyond the shelter of the port. The men from Calais were spread too thinly amongst the ships they’d captured, so they used the smaller boats to take ropes between them. One well-manned ship could tow another easily enough, with the sun rising and France clearly visible across the Channel.
With the sails up and billowing in the wind, Warwick felt the desire to sing a sea shanty he recalled from his youth. His voice rang out across the waves and those who heard and knew it sang with him, grinning as they worked the sails and tillers, guiding their prizes back to Calais.
24
Spring came to the French coast, bringing gentle breezes and blue skies filled with wheeling cormorants and gulls. The stolen fleet had proved vital for sailing up the coast of England to collect soldiers and lords loyal to the Yorkist cause. By June, the Calais fortress was heaving with English soldiers, packed into every spare space and stable. Two thousand of them would cross and invade, leaving eight hundred behind. As the last piece of English land in France, neither Salisbury nor Warwick wanted to be the ones who lost the fortress in their absence. The Calais walls had to be well manned, no matter what else was at stake.
Warwick had not been idle in the months since his jaunt across to Kent. The watchman’s words had interested him and there was rarely a night that went by without some small cog slipping over on the dark waters, filled with the best speakers he could find. As the spring passed, Warwick’s men were to be found in every Kent town and village, calling out for those who wished to avenge Jack Cade and repay the savagery of Ludford. Ten years before, Cade had entered London with some fifteen thousand men. Though some of them had been from Essex and other parts, the king and his officers were no more popular in Kent than they had been a decade earlier. A new generation of boys had grown up under the yoke of cruel punishments and brutal taxation. After the dark news of Attainder carried out on York, Salisbury and Warwick, every report Warwick received went some way to revive his sprits.
By the end of June, they were ready. Only bad weather kept them in port then, the sea too rough to risk a crossing. Mindful of his oath to York, Warwick fretted for every lost day, but the gales had to blow themselves out. His fleet of forty-eight small ships could carry all two thousand across in one great surge, with half the Calais garrison employed to bring the ships back to France. After the desertion of Captain Trollope to the king’s side, those men could not do enough to aid the earls.
As they trooped into boats and rowed out to the ships, it intrigued Warwick to think of men like Caesar, who had been forced to build a fleet to take his legions across to Kent, fifteen hundred years before. The target was the same: London. As well as a royal garrison they dared not leave at their backs, London meant Parliament and the only group with the power to reverse the Writs of Attainder. London was the key to England’s lock, as it had always been.
The wind was blowing hard towards the English coast as the fleet launched. Grey clouds were low overhead and a constant drizzle chilled the men packed into the ships. Yet it was only a single leap and they could see the landing spot after just an hour or so at sea. One by one, the ships came in under as much sail as they dared raise. The captains could not beach the vessels for fear of staving them in. It took time to land men by boats and, all the while, the local militia could be seen rushing along the quays and docks, gathering men to repel the invasion. There were too few to hold back so many boatloads of men landing at once. A brief struggle developed before the militia gave up, leaving bodies on the quayside and more men haring away.
Warwick landed a little further along the coast, establishing a defensible position on a long shingle beach and putting archers out. Unchallenged, he and his men marched back to the port of Sandwich and filled it, watching as ships turned and raised sail, tacking into a rough sea and rising wind. Even then, there were hundreds of small boats still being rowed to shore, in such numbers that they bobbed together like driftwood. Some were unlucky, the fragile craft turning over as they caught a wave. Men who went into the surf in mail-shirts were not seen again.
Close by the spot where Warwick had touched the land of his birth, two of the merchant cogs were driven right up on the shingle. As the ships leaned and settled, their captains ran plank bridges out from the lowest point of the deck so that they could walk a dozen blindfolded warhorses to the ground. Those ships would rot where they lay, but men like Salisbury were too old to march the sixty miles to London.
The sun was setting by the time the last of the fleet vanished into the mist and clouds on the Channel, leaving them alone. In a thin drizzle, the men settled down to fires on the beach and docks. They ate and drank and covered themselves as best they could, trying to snatch a few hours of sleep.
With the sun’s return, a column of men came marching through the town. Soldiers were leaping up all around Warwick, ready for an attack. Yet it was not the local militia returning to repel his men, or even some part of the king’s forces. Word had already spread of the landing and hundreds of Kentish men had come with their axes and pikes and cleavers. They halted by the docks and Warwick could only smile, accepting watchman Jim Wainwright into his service at fourpence a day. The earls’ army began to move west and those first few hundred became thousands, with every town they passed adding to their number.
On horseback, Warwick and his father acknowledged the cheering crowds in towns and villages, Kentish families greeting them as saviours rather than enemies of the Crown. It was dizzying, and Warwick could hardly believe the success of his recruiters. The men of Kent had risen once more and this time
he
was the spark. He could not help wonder how many of them knew he had fought against them on the last dark night they had entered the capital city.
The irony of it all was not lost on him. In the very steps of Jack Cade, he would have to gather them in Southwark and cross London Bridge, heading for the Tower and the only force able to stop his progress.
They reached the southern banks of the London river on the afternoon of the third day, after three hard marches. Warwick had ordered a count and found more than ten thousand men of Kent had joined him. They might have been unarmoured and untrained, but Cade had used such men well enough. Warwick remembered that night of blood and chaos all too well.
With his father and Edward of March, Warwick walked right to the southern end of London Bridge, ignoring the city crowds watching like it was a day at the fair.
‘I see no king’s men,’ Salisbury said. ‘Ours are weary, though the weakest fell behind a day ago. I would take them in.’ His pride was clear as he looked to his son, accepting that the decision would be Warwick’s.
The vast host of Kentish men had come because of Warwick’s recruiters. They looked to the young earl for command, not his father. York’s son did the same, and Salisbury had experienced a revelation when he had seen the landing parties. He could trust his son to lead. It was something of an effort, but he had never been the sort of fool to grasp authority beyond its natural time. For all Salisbury’s experience in war, he had discovered he would step back for his heir, if for no other man.
Warwick sensed his father’s satisfaction and gave private thanks for the years he had spent in Calais. Every father remembers when his son stole or lied, or made a fool of himself with young love. To have been given even a few years apart had allowed Warwick to be tempered away from that stern eye.
‘The best reports we have give the Tower garrison as a thousand strong,’ Warwick said. ‘They might surrender, though I have little hope of it. I know only that we cannot leave them to sally out of London behind us. We’ll either force a way in, or bottle them up behind their own walls. You both know the plan. Speed is all, if we are to have any chance of success. Every day we lose here is one more for the king’s forces to grow and make ready.’
He did not mention the Bills of Attainder that had been committed to law. At that moment, on July the fifth, 1460, all their titles and estates had been torn from them. Though none of them spoke of it, they felt the loss like an open wound, bleeding them white. Yet after Ludlow, the king’s army would have dispersed back to farms and manors. Warwick and his father were gambling on a single strike up the country, on reaching King Henry before his lords could gather once again. Anything in law could be overturned after that, once they had the king and his Royal Seal.
Edward of March had listened, observing the pride between father and son. He stood like a statue in his armour, wearing no helmet. He too had ridden from the coast, his horse more suited to pulling a plough than bearing a man. The animal cropped grass some way back, while the restless sea of Kentish men stamped and waited among the armoured ranks. There was a sense of anticipation in the air; they could all feel it. Once across that bridge, their pleasant march through the countryside would be at an end.
‘I’m not spending another night on cold ground when I could rest in a fine bed and enjoy meat and ale,’ Edward said. ‘The men have come this far today. Tired or not, they’ll march one more mile.’
In comparison to Salisbury, Edward was still fresh, his strength and stamina almost without limit. Each dawn, he’d been the first to rise, bounding to his feet and pissing happily before he was pulling bits of armour into place and yelling for servants to bring him food. Warwick could not fault him for his enthusiasm, though in truth the energy of the young earl could be wearing after too long in his presence.
‘Very well,’ Warwick said. ‘I see the two of you won’t be satisfied until we are in the city. Bring the knights and men in armour to the front, Edward. Cade faced archers and I want shields ready.’
‘It looks safe enough,’ Edward said, peering between the houses and shops on their side of the bridge. ‘I could walk across right now.’
He took a pace, and Warwick’s expression darkened.
‘When you are in command, you can do as you wish, Edward. Until then, you’ll do as I damn well say.’
The young earl met his eyes without embarrassment, letting the moment of silence stretch.
‘Have someone else fetch the knights, then. I will be first into the city, I think. For my father’s honour.’
Warwick had tensed under the giant’s stare. He coloured slightly, setting his jaw and whistling for a runner to take the order. His authority had been challenged in front of his father, but the truth was that it would take a lot of men to stop the Earl of March if he decided to make a point of it. It was not a time to quarrel and Warwick chose discretion, though his voice was strained as he passed orders to assemble.
Men-at-arms came running up with shields and weapons ready. Behind them, the host of Kentish followers gathered and swirled, the veterans of Cade’s army exchanging stories of the last time with anyone who would listen. The mood was light and only Warwick walked stiffly as the horns blew and the first ranks stepped on to the wide street that ran down the centre of London Bridge.