Stormbird

Jack’s eyes narrowed, wondering if Woodchurch knew he couldn’t read.

‘What’s that, then?’ he said uneasily.

The written word had always been his enemy. Whenever he’d been flogged or fined or put in the village stocks, there had always been some white-faced scribe at the heart of it, scribbling away with his goose quill and ink. Jack could see Thomas was all in a flutter about something. The man was breathing hard and Jack knew by then that the archer wasn’t one to get excited over nothing.

‘They’re offering us a pardon, Jack! A bleeding pardon! All crimes and misprisions forgotten, on condition we disperse.’ He saw Cade begin to frown and went on quickly before the obstinate man could start arguing. ‘It’s victory, Jack! We knocked ’em bloody and they want no more of it! God, Jack. We’ve done it!’

‘Does it say they’ll dismiss the judges, then?’ Jack asked softly. ‘Does it say they’ll repeal the poacher’s laws or lower the taxes on working men? Can you read those words in your little scroll, Tom?’

Thomas shook his head in disbelief.

‘The messenger read it to me downstairs — and don’t start that, Jack, not now. It’s a pardon — for all crimes up to this day. The men can go home with gold and their freedom — and no one will come chasing us, after. You’ll be the hero who took on London and won. Isn’t that what you wanted? Come on, Jack. This is good. The ink still smudges, Jack, and it has the queen’s signature on it. They’ve put this together in a morning.’

Cade raised his hand to his neck and cracked it left and right, easing the stiffness there. Half of him wanted to whoop and holler, to respond with the same wild pleasure he saw in Woodchurch. With a grunt, he throttled that part to silence while he thought it over.

‘We frightened them last night,’ he said, after a time. ‘That’s the root of it.’

‘We did, Jack,’ Thomas replied immediately. ‘We showed them what happens if they ride too hard over men like us. We put the fear of God and Jack Cade into them and this is the result.’

Cade crossed to the door and yelled for Ecclestone and Paddy to come up. Both men were sound asleep on the ground floor of the inn. It took a while to rouse them, but they came at last up the steps, bleary-eyed and blinking. Paddy had found a stoppered jug of spirits and cradled it like a favourite child.

‘Tell them, Tom,’ Jack said, turning back to sit on the low bed. ‘Tell the lads what you told me.’

He waited as Thomas repeated himself, watching the faces of his friends closely as they began to understand. Not that Ecclestone gave anything away. The man’s expression didn’t change a whit, even when he sensed the silent scrutiny and glanced at Jack. Paddy was shaking his head in amazement.

‘My whole life and I never thought I’d live to see something like this,’ Paddy said. ‘The bailiffs and sheriffs and landowning bastards, all quaking in fear of us. They’ve been on my back since I was a boy. I never saw them turn away, Jack, not once.’

‘They’re still the same, though,’ Jack said. ‘We killed their soldiers and we strung up a few of the king’s officers. We even took the head of the Kent sheriff. But they’ll find new men. If we take this pardon, they’ll go on just as they are and we’ll have changed nothing.’

Thomas understood the mingled fear and longing and delight in the big man, resting his powerful hands on his thighs as he sat there. Thomas felt the same caution, but he’d also seen the crowds of London line the streets as they left. No one in the inn would admit it, but there wasn’t the heart in the Kentish Freemen for another attack, if they could even cross the bridge again in the face of strong resistance. The crowds of London had been moved to anger and there were more than enough of them. Yet as Paddy and Ecclestone looked at each other, Thomas knew both men would follow Jack again, even if he took them back into the city.

‘We did our part, Jack,’ Thomas went on before they could speak. ‘No man could ask more. And they won’t be the same, not after this. They’ll tread careful, for a few years at least. They’ll know they make their laws only as long as the people say they can. They still rule, all right, but with our damned permission. That’s what they know now. That’s what they know today that they didn’t know yesterday. And if they ride us too hard, they know we’ll gather once more. They know we’ll be standing there in the evening shadows, ready to remind them.’

Jack smiled at the words, enjoying Woodchurch’s fervour and certainty. He too had seen the crowds gather as he’d crossed the bridge that morning. The thought of going back in was not a joyous one, though Jack would rather have died than admit it in that company. He wanted to be persuaded and Thomas had given it to him. He looked up slowly.

‘Is that all right with you, Paddy? Rob?’

Both men nodded and Ecclestone even smiled, his pale face creasing into unaccustomed seams.

Jack stood up and clapped both arms around the group of three men, squeezing them all together.

‘Is the messenger still here, Tom?’ he asked.

‘Waiting outside,’ Thomas replied, feeling a growing sense of relief.

‘Tell him we accept, then. Send him back and let the men know. We’ll enjoy a bit of beef and ale tonight and then tomorrow I’m for home. I think I’ll buy that magistrate’s house and raise a glass to Alwyn bloody Judgment in his own kitchen.’

‘You burned it, Jack,’ Ecclestone muttered.

Cade blinked at him, remembering.

‘I did, didn’t I? Well, I can build a new one. I’ll have my mates around and we’ll sit in the sun and drink from a keg — and toast the dear old king of England, who paid for it all.’

At the day’s end, Margaret stood on the wide wall surrounding the Tower of London, looking down on a city that had suffered. The setting sun turned the horizon the colour of bruises and blood, promising a clear, warm day on the morrow. In truth, from that vantage point there was little sign of the destruction of the night before. The long summer day had seen the first stirrings of order in the capital, with men like Lord Warwick organizing teams of carts to collect the dead. She sighed, disappointed yet again that such an impressive young man should be a supporter of York. The Neville blood ran through too many of her husband’s noble houses, she thought. The family would continue to be a danger to her, at least until her first child was born.

She tapped her hand lightly over her womb, feeling the ache of her fluxes and all the grief and frustration it brought. It would not be this month. She blushed as she recalled the small number of intimate meetings with her husband. Perhaps there would come a time when they were so many she would not be able to remember them all in great detail, but at that moment they were still events in her life, each one as important as her wedding day, or the assault on the Tower.

She prayed in a whisper, the soft words lost into the breeze and the city.

‘Mary, mother of God, please let me grow with child. I am no longer a girl, given to foolish dreams and fancies. Let me be fertile, let me swell.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, sensing the vast weight of the city all around her. ‘Allow me a child and I will bless you all my days. Allow me a son and I will raise chapels to your glory.’

When she opened her eyes once more, she saw a slow line of carts trundling along a road in the distance, filled with white-wrapped bodies. She knew great pits had been dug, each dead man or woman laid out carefully, with a priest to chant a benison over them before the labourers set to work covering them with earth and cold clay. Weeping relatives followed the carts, but it was vital to work fast in the heat of summer. Plagues and sickness would walk in the same footsteps. Margaret shuddered at the thought.

Across the river, Cade’s host had begun a great feast, with bonfires visible as roaring points of light. They had sent their response, but she did not know yet if they would honour it, if they would leave. She did know Derry had made the bridge a fortress if they did not, setting teams of London men to building great barricades along its length.

She smiled to think of his mischievous expression that day, as he raided the Tower for weapons and barrels of powder. He would never have been allowed such a free hand before, but no one would stop him now, not after the previous night. She knew she should not depend on Cade going home, but it was hard to see Derry’s bright malice and not feel confident in whatever he had planned if they rushed the bridge once more. The men of London had worked all day to be ready, sharpening iron and closing roads around the bridge. The news of Cade’s pardon had not yet spread among them and she did not know how they would react when they heard. She did not regret the offer, not now it had been accepted. King Henry was not at her side and for a time the city was her responsibility, her jewel, the pounding heart of the country that had adopted her. Her father, René, could