Stormbird

group. More than a dozen of his peers stood close around him, clapping him on the shoulders and calling their loud congratulations. To Derry’s surprise, the Frenchman had tears running down his pale cheeks. He saw Derry’s expression and laughed.

‘Oh, you English, you are too cold. Do you not understand I have my family land back today? These are tears of joy, monsieur.’

‘Ah, the best kind,’ Derry replied. ‘There was talk of a hunt when His Majesty invited me to accompany him?’

Duke René’s eyes changed subtly in the light.

‘I suspect His Majesty King Charles was amusing himself at your expense, monsieur. There will be no hunting of boar or wolves, not today. Yet His Majesty will accompany his army as they move north through my land. Who can say what English deer we will find shivering in my family fields and vineyards?’

‘I see,’ Derry said, his good humour vanishing. ‘I suspect I will not join you after all, Lord Anjou. If you don’t mind, I will remain here for a time, while I make arrangements to return home.’

He watched Richard of York striding away to give orders to the thousand men he had brought south. They too would withdraw to Normandy. The duke had no choice at all. For a moment, Derry had a sickening sense that York was not the fool he thought he was. There were many English settlers in Maine and Anjou, that much was true. Surely they would not be foolish enough to resist? The agreements King Henry had signed allowed for the peaceful uprooting of English families in the French provinces. Yet the mood of the nobles all around him was indeed that of a hunt. They showed their teeth and he could sense a febrile excitement in the air that worried him. Derry could taste nervous acid in his throat. If the English in Maine and Anjou refused to go, it could yet mean a war. All the work he had put in, all the months of scheming, would be wasted. The hard-won truce would last no longer than frost in summer.

8

For three days, the French army and York’s soldiers shadowed each other, moving north through Anjou. Duke Richard’s men pulled far ahead after that, in part because the French king stopped and held court in every town. The royal party made a grand tour of the Loire valley, making camp whenever King Charles saw something of interest or wished to see a church with the bones of a particular saint. The rivers and vineyards stretching over many miles of land gave him especial pleasure.

Hundreds of Anjou families were evicted by rough French soldiers running ahead of the main army. In shock and despair, they took to the roads in carts or on foot, a great stream of suddenly beggared subjects that only grew each day. York pulled his men back to the new border of English land in France, picketing them on the outskirts of Normandy as the flood of evacuees kept coming, filling every village and town with their misery and complaints. Some of them called angrily for justice from King Henry for their losses, but most were too stunned and powerless to do more than weep and curse.

The evictions went on and there were soon tales of rape and murder to add to the chaos and upheaval as the families came in. As the weeks passed, minor lords sent furious letters and messengers demanding that English forces protect their own, but York set them aside unread. Even if the evictions hadn’t been by decree of an English king, he wanted them to come home with their tales of humiliation. It would fan flames in England, making a fire that would surely consume Derry Brewer and Lord Suffolk. He did not know if the unrest would reach as far as the king himself, but they had brought it about between them and they deserved to be shamed and vilified for what they had done.

Each evening, York went to the church tower of Jublains and looked south over the fields. As the sun set, he could see hundreds of English men, women and children staggering towards the safe border, each with their own story of violence and cruelty. He only wished Derry Brewer or Suffolk, or even King Henry himself, could see what they had brought about.

He heard footsteps on the stone stairs as he stood there, watching the sun set on the forty-third day after the wedding. York looked round in surprise as he saw his wife ascending.

‘What’s this? You should be resting, not climbing cold steps. Where is Percival? I’ll have his ears for it.’

‘Peace, Richard,’ Cecily replied, panting slightly. ‘I know my own strength and I sent Percival away to fetch me cold, pressed juice. I just wanted to see the view that keeps you up here each evening.’

York waved at the open window. In other circumstances, he might have appreciated the dark gold and rose of a French sunset, but as it was, he was oblivious to its beauty.

Cecily leaned on the wide sill after edging around a great bronze bell.

‘Ah, I see,’ she said. ‘Those little people. Are they the English you mentioned?’

‘Yes, all coming north into Normandy with their sorrows and petty rages, as if I do not have enough troubles. I don’t come to watch them. I come because I’m expecting to see the French army marching up here before the year is out.’

‘Will they stop here?’ Cecily asked, her eyes widening.

‘Of course they will stop! Evicting families is more to their taste than English archers. We’ll turn them round and send them south again if they put one foot on English land.’

His wife relaxed visibly.

‘Lord Derby’s wife was saying it’s all an awful mess. Her husband thinks we should tear up whatever agreement has been made and begin again. He says the king must not have been in his right mind …’

‘Hush, my dear. Whatever the truth of it, we have no choice but to defend the new border. In a year or two, perhaps I will be given the chance to take it back in battle. We’ve lost Maine and Anjou before, under King John. Who knows what the future will hold?’

‘But there is a truce, Richard? Lord Derby says there will be twenty years of peace.’

‘Lord Derby has a lot to say to his wife, it seems.’

The tower was as private a place to be found in France, but even so, York stepped close to his wife, running his hand over the bulge of the child growing within her.

‘The mood is ugly among the men, my dear. I have reports of unrest and it has only just begun to spread. I would prefer to know you are safe at home. King Henry has lost the faith of his lords. This will not end well, when enough of them learn it was his hand behind it — and Suffolk’s name on the treaty. I’ll have William de la Pole tried for treason, I swear it. By God, to think I am separated from the throne by the distance of one brother! If my grandfather Edmund had been born before John of Gaunt, I would be wearing the crown that sits so poorly on Henry’s head. I tell you, Cecily, if I were king, I would not give back a single foot of land to the French, not till the last trumpet blast! This is our land and I have to watch as it is given away by fools and schemers. Jesus wept! King Henry is a simpleton. I knew it when he was a boy. He spent too much time with monks and cardinals and not enough wielding a sword like his father. They ruined him, Cecily. They ruined the son of my king with their prayers and poetry.’

‘So let them fall, Richard,’ Cecily said, placing a hand against her husband’s chest and feeling the heart beating strongly. ‘Let them reap the whirlwind, while you grow in strength. Who knows, but you may find yourself in reach of the crown in time? If Henry is as weak as you say?’

Paling, York put a hand tight over his wife’s mouth.

‘Not even here, my darling. Not aloud, not even whispered. It does not need to be said, do you understand?’

Her eyes were bright as he removed his hand. The last rays of the sun were shining into the tower, the entire sky darkening to claret and soft lilac.

‘My dear, no matter what happens next year, this summer must come to an end first. While King Henry prays, good rivers and valleys are taken back by those French whores … I’m sorry, Cecily. My anger soars at the thought of it.’

‘It is forgotten, but you will not teach our child such terms, I hope.’

‘Never. You are as fertile as a vineyard, my fine Neville bride,’ he said, reaching out and touching her belly for good luck. ‘How is the Neville clan?’