The Traitor's Tale Read online

  It was a claim he had never pressed, but to the lords whose hold on power depended on King Henry's weakness, York was a threat to them simply by being alive.

  Until three years ago another threat had been King Henry's uncle, the duke of Gloucester, likewise his heir but, unlike York, constantly challenging the lords around the king—until he was suddenly accused of treason, arrested, and then, before any trial, suddenly dead.

  Which, Joliffe thought, showed that for a king's heir there were worse things than being sent to govern Ireland. Still, just now and speaking for himself, "worse" very easily included going into a night-battle on London Bridge behind a battle-eager Matthew Gough. Though he supposed it could have been worse: he could have been going into battle ahead of Gough.

  Or against him.

  Fully armed now except for helmet and gauntlets, Gough said, "Owen, you help with him," and Joliffe submitted not only to the dead Jankin's arming doublet but his half-leg armor and then a sleeveless brigantine of small, overlapping metal plates riveted to a canvas tunic covered by red cloth that matched the doublet—even to the shape and color of the stain, unfortunately—while Gough told how the night's plan had been put together in snatched meetings during the day as the Londoner's fears against Jack Cade grew.

  "So it had to be simple and it is. When the curfew bell rings from St. Martin-le-Grand, that's when we all make a run for the bridge. By then all of Cade's men that are going back to Southwark will be gone over. We rush Cade's guards on the bridge-gate, retake it, hold it, and the city is ours."

  Joliffe shifted his shoulders to settle the brigantine's weight better and asked, "What about Cade's guards on the other city gates?"

  "The aldermen for the wards there are supposed to see to them."

  "And those of Cade's men still in London? The ones who've avoided obeying the curfew order?"

  Rhys answered that with a curt laugh and, "Gough wrung promise from Lord Scales that there'll be men from the Tower to hold this end of the bridge against attack on our backs."

  Warily, Joliffe asked, "Why would a promise to help against Cade have to be wrung from him?"

  "Because he's gone soft," Gough snapped. "In France he was good enough. Maybe talked a better game than he gave sometimes but was good enough. Now he's cuddled in with that lot around the king and doesn't want to unfeather the soft nest he's made for himself. God knows he's let things happen in London these few days as make no sense if he wasn't taking someone's orders for them, that's sure."

  "What about a sword?" Rhys asked. "Is he to have one, or just his dagger?" That most men wore hanging from their belts, and especially in these days.

  "Give him Jankin's," Gough said curtly. "No reason not to."

  Joliffe had left his own sword with his horse, not wanting to walk too openly armed in London, as if looking for trouble. He had already shifted his belt and dagger to wear over the short-skirted brigantine and took the sword Rhys now handed him, still in its leather scabbard wrapped around with its long belt. While Joliffe buckled on the belt and settled the scabbarded sword on his left hip, Gough crossed to the window. By the deepening shadows in the street, Joliffe guessed the sun was gone or nearly so; darkness would come fast now, and Gough, abruptly cheerful, came away from the window, saying, "Come on. Let's be on our way before the bell starts."

  He took up his helmet—a full, visored bascinet—from the table, was slipping it down over his close-fitted arming cap and fastening the buckle along his jaw as he moved for the door. Rhys and Owen had lighter, wide-brimmed, open-faced kettle-helmets, and Owen tossed a like one to Joliffe as they followed Gough toward the door. With nothing like their open pleasure, Joliffe strapped it on and followed them. Over his years, he had been, at one time and another and among other things, a scholar of sorts, in a company of traveling players, what could only be called a spy, and now was in uncertain service to a man who might someday be as suddenly dead as the late duke of Gloucester if the men around King Henry decided on it. On the whole, Joliffe was not sure it had been a sensible life, but he had mostly enjoyed it and as much for what he had not done as for what he had. And among the things he had not done was ever take liking to throwing himself into fights. Whatever was in Gough's letter, it had better be worth this.

  The same man let them out the innyard gate and as quickly shut it behind them. There were already clots of men in the street and steadily more after they turned the corner into Gracechurch Street, coming from side streets and all of them headed toward the bridge. Londoners, not rebels, armed with cudgels and sometimes swords, with an occasional breastplate and helmet among them. Most of the rebels Joliffe had seen had been no better armed and armored, so that was well enough. It was in their plain great numbers the rebels were most dangerous, and the narrow space of London Bridge would be to the Londoners' advantage in a fight.

  Horatio at the bridge, holding back Lars Porsena's army and living to tell the tale, Joliffe thought encouragingly.

  Or, less encouragingly, Roland at Roncesvalles and very dead.

  From across the city St. Martin's bell began to ring, mounting with sharp, hard strokes past the simple declaration of curfew into a brazen clamor. Gough broke into a dog-trot. Rhys and Owen matched him. So did Joliffe. Four fully armed men moving with clear purpose drew the scattering of other men to them, after them, with purpose, too. Nearly at the bridge, with the bell still clamoring over the London rooftops, they met with a score of Lord Scales' men from the Tower coming out of Thames Street on their left. Gough paused to share words with their captain, then turned to the gathering Londoners, more still joining from surrounding streets. With his visor up so they could see his grinning face, he called in a battlefield voice, "What we want is a hard rush, some sharp pushing, and then, if they fight us, some head-bashing! Who's with me?"

  He was answered with the formless yell of men with their blood up—if not their wits, thought Joliffe—and when Gough drew his sword, swung away from them, and charged onto the bridge, the Londoners charged after him, still yelling.

  To Joliffe's surprise Rhys and Owen pulled aside and hung back, but only so they could close on the crowd's rear flanks to urge it and any stragglers forward with shouts of their own. Not bothering with the shouting, Joliffe went with them.

  From the London end of the bridge to almost the other, narrow-fronted shops and houses lined and overhung both sides of the street, closing off all sight of the river. From other times of crossing the bridge, Joliffe knew that near to the far end the houses ended, leaving a gap before the double-towered stone gateway set to guard the drawbridge there. The rebels had been caught unready, with warning enough that some had started to shove the gates closed, but Gough and the Londoners smashed into the few rallying to meet their on-rush, jamming them backward into the gateway past any chance of the gates being closed, and after that it was melee work, the narrow gateway and bridge working in the Londoners' favor against the rebels' greater numbers in the push-and-shove the fighting rapidly became.

  Joliffe had never favored hazarding his life—had done so somewhat too many times but did not favor doing so—and he held to the back edge of the struggle. Not that coming to the fore of it would have been easy. Packed into the gateway, men lacked room for clear sword-work. Shoving, yelling, fists, pommels, and sometimes a dagger-stroke were the main business as the struggling mass lurched one way, then the other, neither side able to force the other back enough to gain the gates for themselves, but in it Joliffe's own blood roused, and even knowing it was the other men's heat kindling his own, he shoved into the gateway with them, his dagger in one hand, dead Jankin's sword in his other.

  The struggle went on far longer than he would have thought it could. Full dark came while they were at it, leaving them to fight by the flaring yellow light of torches and in the thick shadows under the gateway's tower. As the men at the front tired and faded back, those at the rear pushed forward to batter and push and be battered and pushed. Sometimes a man on one side or the othe
r would go down and fighting would turn fierce again, but the first hot edge of fighting was long since gone, and more and more often there were brief drawings off on both sides, the fighting replaced with shouts back and forth.

  Joliffe, resting in one of those lulls, sitting on his heels with his back against the low stone wall of the bridge-edge in the long open space between the last of the houses and the gateway, thought the shouting seemed to do about as much good as the fighting was. He had seen at least two men dead and a good many bloodied and bashed, but except for that and that the fire of fighting was mostly turned to bloody-minded stubbornness on both sides, nothing was much changed. Still, the street here was still full of men milling about, waiting to start again, with Gough standing a few yards away from him, close to the last housewall, in talk with some of the Tower men, probably about how best to press forward and take the gateway once and for all. Rhys and Owen were a little further away, in the better light of a torch there, Owen wrapping a cloth around a cut across Rhys' arm above his gauntlet, taken in the latest squall of fighting. They were a little laughing together, while Gough, with his helmet off and wiping sweat from his forehead, was frowning and shaking his head at whatever one of the Tower men was saying.

  Joliffe was listening not to them or the general shift and talk of men but to the river in the darkness behind and below him, the muted thundering of the water foaming and fighting its way between the bridge's wide stone pillars, so many and so thick they held the river back from where, with all its force, it wanted to go. He couldn't tell if the tide was at ebb or flow or on the turn, but knew for certain he'd rather be up here than down there—and now that his blood was cooled again, would rather be some place else altogether. The brigantine was more weight than he cared to carry; the helmet was awkward on his head; he didn't like trying to hurt people or have them trying to hurt him; he hadn't had supper; he wanted to be in his own bed sound asleep; he . . .

  Gough strode out into the midst of the Londoners. His reputation and authority from the years when England had been winning the French war still served him well. More than once this night Joliffe had seen him rally the Londoners into believing they were the bold warriors they had never been, going not into an untidy scuffle on a bridge but into a battle with a leader of legend. Now Gough was doing it again. By voice and gesture he was gathering up the Londoners and lower men out of their weariness into readiness to fight again. He pointed toward the gateway and said something that brought laughter from the nearest men. Other men jostled to be closer. They were crowded around him now, and the laughter changed to a cheer. He was urging them on to a final great rush and push, and Joliffe shoved himself to his feet as the men around Gough swung from him and surged yet again toward the gate, Gough urging them on from behind. Joliffe guessed he meant to drive them rather than lead them this time, probably in the hope of bringing the weight of men in the rear to bear on the forward fighters, finally driving them through the gateway by plain weight of bodies. Good. Then there would be an end to this and he could get that letter and be away.

  Just as there had been all night, more men were coming along the bridge in scattered fews and handfuls, belated to the fight. Gough turned from the fight to call out welcome to them, gesturing them past him, into the gateway scrummage, then turning toward it himself. Rhys and Owen, done with their bandaging, were moving to join him. They none of them saw four more, club-bearing men come out of the shadows along the street, pause, point, and then two of them spring into a run straight for Gough's back, the other two at Rhys and Owen.

  Joliffe shouted warning as he broke forward into a run, too, and although Owen went down from a club alongside his helmet, Rhys dropped into a crouch below the blow meant for him and without straightening spun around, his dagger out, and went for his attacker as Joliffe barreled into the man who had felled Owen. Both his fight and Rhys' were sharp and short, with Joliffe's man making to swing the club two-handed at him but Joliffe, already too close, using his free hand to grab and shove the man's arms higher and the man backward, his head lifting, clearing his throat for Joliffe to drive his dagger under the man's chin and up.

  He did not stay to see the man fall, just shoved him away while jerking his dagger out, saw from the corner of his eye that Rhys' man was down, too, and spun with Rhys toward Gough.

  Gough was down, but his attackers had dropped their clubs. One of them had a dagger out but they had caught Gough under the arms, one on either side, and were making to drag him toward the bridge's edge. Their confidence in their fellows was too great: they did not look around until just the instant before Rhys and Joliffe took them from behind. Joliffe s man was wearing no back-armor, only a breastplate, its leather straps crossed across his back. Joliffe stabbed into his left side, thrusting up toward the heart. By the time he had his dagger out again and the man was falling, Rhys had shoved the other fellow staggering forward to thump against the bridge railing and slump to the ground. Dead, Joliffe supposed, but was already shoving his own man roughly aside from Gough, lying face-down where they had dropped him.

  Together, he and Rhys turned him to his back just as Owen came staggering over, too late for everything. But it had been too late from the beginning. Gough's dead eyes staring past them into nothing told them that. And the blood on Rhys' hand from where he had held Gough to turn him over told the rest.

  "Under his arm," Rhys said. "They clubbed him down and one of the cozening shits stabbed in under his arm. He never had chance at all."

  Nor had it been a chance attack. There were answers Joliffe would like to have, but, "Are they dead?" he asked, looking around at the four sprawled bodies.

  "Right they are," said Rhys. He was closing Gough's eyes. A few men were falling back from the rear of the fight, gathering around, beginning to ask questions that the squires and Joliffe ignored, Rhys instead ordering, "Owen, see what's on them." And at Joliffe, "Watch him," leaving him with Gough's body while going himself to rifle through the clothing of the two dead men who had done for Gough, moving with the expert quickness of someone who had done this uncounted times on a battlefield, looking for what might be worth his while to have.

  This time, though, he was looking for the same thing Joliffe wanted—evidence of who these men had been and why they had wanted Gough dead—and said angrily when he had finished, having found nothing but small pouches that clinked with coins inside each man's doublet and tucked them inside his own, "Nothing." He looked up at the surround of faces. "Anybody know any of these curs?" he demanded. "They look like Londoners."

  Heads shook in general denial echoed by voices saying no one knew them. In truth none of the dead men looked anything in particular. Their clothing was ordinary, serviceable. They could have been anybody from anywhere. Rhys picked up the dagger that had fallen with the second man Joliffe had killed and gave it a hard looking over, but except it had Gough's blood on it, it had nothing to tell; and suddenly, fiercely, Rhys stood up and with a wide swing of his arm flung the thing out into the darkness above the Thames.

  Owen came back from the other dead men, carrying their belts with their daggers in one hand, two more pouches with probably coin in the other, but, "Nothing else on them," he said.

  From the gateway the yells and clashing and scuffle had gone on, most men not knowing what had happened behind them, but now someone shouted, "They've fired the bridge!" and the night burst past yellow torchlight into the vicious, leaping red and orange of unleashed flames. The men who had gathered around Gough's body disappeared in a rush toward the gateway, shouting. Rhys, with the calm of a man who's seen worse, said, "The gatehouse is stone. There's no wind, no houses close to take fire. It shouldn't spread."

  "It's the drawbridge that's burning," Owen said.

  "That's good, then," Rhys said, level-voiced. "They've given up hope of retaking the gate and want to see we can't go after them when they retreat." Then with the heaviness of a man not able to hold the worst at bay any longer, "Let's shift him back to the George.
Where's his helmet?"

  Joliffe found it and slung it from his arm by its chin-strap while Rhys unbuckled and slid Gough's sword belt off him and laid it, the scabbard, and Gough's sword on his body. Owen carefully folded Gough's hands over the sword, and Rhys said gruffly, "Come on then," and with Joliffe at Gough's feet and Rhys and Owen at his head they lifted him and set off along the bridge, keeping well aside, out of the way of men and women running toward the gateway with buckets and long ropes to haul up river water against the flames.

  Looking back as they came off the bridge, Joliffe saw the rising black roils of smoke lighted by flames from below and wished the bridge-folk good luck. Then he had to give all his will to setting one foot in front of the other up the slope from the bridge to the turning into Lombard Street, leaving it to Rhys and Owen to answer, when they wanted to, whatever questions were thrown at them by Londoners come out of their houses to ask what was happening. Mostly Rhys simply snapped, "Go and see, if you want to know." Only as they came into the yard at the George did they pause for the innkeeper's questions, and to his credit he was more distressed by Gough's death than by the bridge, saying with wonder and regret, "Matthew Gough. All those years fighting the French, only to die against some rebel scum here in London. There's fate for you."