They had entered the city and the crowds still cheered and waved as they crossed the river and reached the streets beyond. Warwick roared an order and the vanguard of armoured men swung right, heading towards the Tower and the royal garrison.
25
Lord Scales was bright red with strangled emotions as he strode along the walls of the Tower of London, looking down at the streets below. From that great height, he could see the army gathering a mile away across the river. He felt a shudder run through him at the sound of horns, signalling they had entered London. At that moment, he would have given anything for another thousand men.
The memories of Jack Cade’s rebellion were still raw, for all it had been a decade before. He had dwelled on that failure to defend the city for a long time, not least for his part in it. With no effort at all, Scales could recall being witness to hundreds of murders, as rioting men turned the city into a charnel house. Order had broken down completely on that appalling night. The thought of seeing anything like that ever again made his old heart thump painfully and his fists clench to cramping. He knew he was working himself up to apoplexy and the danger of collapse. His doctor had warned him about his colour, his humours out of balance as old age squeezed out his strength. Yet only anger controlled the terrible fear that made sweat pour from him.
His reward for that night ten years earlier had been a pension of a hundred pounds a year and the use of a royal merchant ship. Scales had made himself wealthy on that trade, buying and selling small cargoes of cloth and wool. Command of the Tower garrison was his last post going into retirement, a sinecure, with a generous pension and a household of servants to tend him. At sixty-three years of age, Scales knew he was no longer a man to go out and face a screaming riot with sword and shield. He felt his weakness in his aching joints and every softly wheezing breath.
Along the walls, cannon teams waited for his command. His one comfort was that the defences had been made much stronger since Cade’s rebellion. If an enemy force tried to break the gatehouse, he had heavy guns to sweep the street clear in bloody rags. Torsion catapults of a design any Roman legionary would have recognized were also there along the battlements, ready to spring the most terrifying weapon he controlled over the walls, much worse than the guns of bronze and iron. Scales crossed himself, kissing the ring on his finger that held the crest of his family. He would not allow the Tower to be breached. He almost smiled at the thought of what he could unleash against the men of Kent this time.
‘Let them come,’ he murmured, staring into the dim haze across the river where so many still waited to cross. At the distance of a mile, he could see the Kentish mob as a stain on the land, shrinking in as they entered his city. The people of London were making no effort to stop them, he thought, seething. A man might expect them to remember the terror and damage from the last time, but no, he could hear cheering on the breeze, fools waving their caps at men who would light the capital on fire. Well, they would not have the Tower, if London burned down around it. Scales swore it to himself.
It was cold comfort. His job was to defend the good people from the mob and he could not help them. Beyond a few scattered aldermen and their personal guards, he knew he commanded the only soldiers in London. He clenched his jaw, his eyes cold and calm. The king’s nobles were all in the north, either on their own great estates or around Coventry. Scales had too few men to sally out, no matter what horrors he would see from the walls. All he could do was honour the exact wording of his commission and hold the Tower until such time as reinforcements reached the city. Once again he looked down the line of cannons facing west over the streets. The river ran along the southern walls, with no bridge there to make him fear them coming at his flank. The Tower was a fortress and it would speak in tongues of fire to anyone who approached.
‘Stand ready for my order,’ he bellowed, hearing his voice echo across the ancient stones. Eight hundred of his men tensed to wait. The gun teams checked their braziers and slow-matches one last time, the iron shot and bags of corned powder already in place. The white tower loomed over them all and Scales remembered the carnage and blood-spattered ground he had seen all around it before. He shook his head. It would not happen again.
Warwick, Salisbury and March rode abreast along Thames Street, heading east to the Tower. Their slow progress went some way to block the crowds behind them, though more and more people ducked under and around the horses, rushing on. All three had their swords bared and ready, carried along on a tide of shouting Londoners who seemed to have been waiting for an opportunity to unleash their own anger, regardless of whatever the earls or the men of Kent intended. Warwick saw hundreds bearing cudgels or long knives, rushing from street to street. His horse was buffeted by those trying to shove past and he struggled to understand what was happening. He had wanted to be the spark for rebellion, it was true. He had not known he was sitting on a keg of black powder as he lit the match.
There was no question of leading the crowds anywhere. They all knew where the king’s garrison was and they streamed towards the Tower with Warwick’s army, beckoning them on. Women and children ran with the mob and the pace increased moment by moment until Warwick and his father found themselves trotting to keep Edward of March in sight. Sir Robert Dalton and the big figure of Jameson loped along on either side of the young earl, watching for any danger. Edward rode obliviously, clearly delighted by the chaos as he moved with the tide.
There had been no parliament called for more than three years. Far behind them, the Palace of Westminster was shuttered and damp, unwarmed by fires or the words of men. Warwick knew King Henry had been hidden away in Kenilworth, but not how the rest of the country had fared without the beating heart of his government. It seemed the king’s officers had been cruel when left to enforce the laws on their own. There was mindless rage all around him, and Warwick began to wonder if he could even control what he had begun. When Cade had entered London, the good citizens had barricaded themselves in their homes. This time, they led the way.
The mob grew and grew, filling every side road, courtyard and alley with struggling figures, all converging on the Tower and its garrison of hated king’s soldiers. The land was clear around the walls there, a vast space of stone flags that Warwick recognized as a killing ground even as he was forced out into it. The crowd screeched and bellowed their anger up at the Tower battlements, looking to the Kentish men as if they expected them to march right up to the gatehouse and kick it down.
Warwick reined in with his father, making a still place in the swirl of rushing people before they could be pushed against the Tower itself. Even then, the warhorses stamped and skittered left and right, made nervous by the noise and press of men all around.
Salisbury was staring up to the highest point of the outer walls, narrowing his eyes at the sight of dark figures and rising streams of smoke. The black mouths of cannon loomed out over the crowd, pointing down at them. Still, the people poured in, more and more of them in wild disarray, filling the open space until there was hardly room to move.
‘Do you see the guns?’ Salisbury shouted to his son, pointing. Warwick nodded, the noise too great to reply. It was chaos and he could see some of his captains beating men back with clubs just to make space for themselves. Those men were growing afraid in the heaving and shoving of too many packed around them. Already, they were red-faced and hoarse with shouting, pushing men away.
‘Let them have axes, these men of London!’ Salisbury shouted at the top of his lungs. Some of the mob heard him and cheered. ‘Let them cut their way in through the gatehouse!’
Warwick could hear only one word in three, but he gestured for his men to move forward to the weakest point of the Tower fortress. Cade had forced his way in once. They would again.
High above, Warwick heard a single voice call an order, with dozens more replying. He looked up, suddenly afraid.
Scales glared poisonously as the crowd swelled out into the open ground around the Tower. He was seeing a true mob, common men driven wild at the chance to break and destroy. All his life he had stood for order and stability and now there they were, a horde of wide-eyed fools come to tear it all down. Armed soldiers in mail struggled amongst them like pebbles thrown into a river. Hundreds of Kentish men bawled Cade’s name, as if they could bring him back from the dead with sheer rage.
More and more of them came, and Scales could feel sweat run from his armpits beneath his tunic. He could
feel
the hatred of the dispossessed as they howled up at him. Men who saw no value in the king’s law, who would throw it all aside in an orgy of violence. He had feared the damage they might do away from his reach. Instead, they had come to him.
He leaned forward, gripping the stone wall and staring down. Dozens of men carrying axes were gathering in wedge formation, their intention obvious as they tramped through the crowds, heading for the Tower gatehouse. Scales swore as he saw two men on horseback at the rear, a small island in the swirling madness. He thought he could feel the gaze of those horsemen on him. Scales shook his head in disbelief as he recognized the tabard colours of Salisbury and Warwick. A spike of fury shuddered through him at such a betrayal by king’s earls. No, he remembered suddenly. They had been made common.
Three of the cannon along the walls had been loaded without round shot. As the mob filled the open ground below, Scales filled his lungs.
‘Warning cannon! No ball!’ he shouted, his voice echoing back from the White Tower behind him.
A triple crack sounded, belching long spits of flame from the barrels and wreathing the teams in gritty smoke. Scales lost sight of the mob below as the cloud passed. He heard screams, but when it cleared, they were pressing forward in a spasm. Axes were rising and falling against the outer gate and he swore aloud, not caring who heard him.
No. He would not lose the Tower. Scales was pale as he looked up, seeing the faces of the gunnery teams waiting for the order. They were afraid, with every right to be. Not one of them would survive the madness if he allowed it inside.
‘Bring up the wildfire,’ Scales ordered. Men ran down the wide steps along the wall, crossing to the storerooms and returning at a much slower pace. Each one held a large clay pot, with both arms around its girth. They cradled them like children and they were sweating, terrified of dropping them on to the stones.
Scales could feel his heart skipping in his chest, so fast that it blurred his vision and made him dizzy. He leaned over the battlements and shouted for the mob to get back. They snarled and cursed up at him. The thumps of axes and hammers went on and he stood away from the edge, unable to watch.
‘Cannon. Load ball and fire!’ he said, too quietly. The gun teams could not hear him and he walked along the battlements, repeating the order so that they set to in a flurry of activity. He did not look down again as the first guns thundered, followed instantly by screams. More and more of the cannons on the walls poured shot into the massed crowd, tearing them apart.
Scales stopped by one of the small catapults, resting his hand on the great twist of horsehair that was the spring, thicker than a man’s thigh. The clay balls were in place, with rags dangling from the top of each one. Three of them were spaced along the walls and Scales crossed himself, muttering a prayer as he nodded to the men watching.
Each dangling twist was lit and the catapults released almost instantly. No one on the walls wanted to be close to that foul substance once it was aflame. Even the cannon teams stood back from their weapons, ready to run if one was broken and spilled.
The smoke was still thick in the air and Scales watched as the heavy clay balls went soaring out, dropping quickly as streaks of brightness in the fog. He closed his eyes.
The sound of the crowd seemed to drop away to stunned silence for a single beat. Then the screaming began again and this time it built and built, the noise of insanity. Flames lit the gunsmoke and soared up at furnace heat, burning any living thing they touched. Scales shuddered. He had overseen the production of the wildfire himself, a foul blend of naphtha and nitre, sulphur and burned lime. It stuck to whatever it touched and it consumed all flesh. Water merely fed the flames and could not put it out. He thought he could hear splashes as burning men threw themselves into the Thames, then screamed as they drowned, finding the fires of hell still eating at their skin.
Scales raised his chin. The gun crews were staring at him, waiting for fresh orders. He did not meet their eyes and went back to his spot on the walls. He clenched his right fist at the sight of the crowd streaming away like rats. Some of them still burned, staggering and wailing, setting others alight with their touch until their voices were choked by flame. The smell was sickening and Scales could hear some of the gunners vomit as they realized what it was. He breathed hard in satisfaction. As ugly as it had been, the mob knew by then what awaited them in their madness. The Tower would be defended with fire and iron. It would not fall.
Warwick saw the first empty flames spitting across the heads of the crowd. He looked again at the number of cannons facing them and turned, white-faced, to his father.
‘Pull the men back! We don’t need to break the gate, just to hold the garrison in London. If they’ll fire on their own, we have no choice.’
Salisbury sat stunned as he saw how many women and children were in that heaving crowd. He looked up in disgust at the battlements, unable to believe the commander would slaughter the people he was sworn to protect.
In ignorance or terror, the vast mob pressed even closer to the Tower walls. Salisbury could see axemen attacking the gatehouse and knew they had to be called back. He pressed a horn to his lips and found himself panting too hard to use it. Instead, he tossed it to his son and watched as Warwick blew a falling note, repeating the call for retreat.