The Traitor's Tale (2 page)

"What's planned for tonight?" Joliffe asked. "Wait until Cade's men are into Southwark, then seize the bridge and shut them out of London again?"

"You have it," Gough approved. "Straight and simple." He looked out the window where the shadows in the street were deepening toward twilight. "So we're heading for the bridge when dark comes down—Londoners and some men-at-arms from the Tower for stiffening."

"And us," the younger squire said happily.

Joliffe silently wished them all joy of it and said, "That should make it the easier for me to go out of London some other way with whatever it is you want my lord of York to have."

"Well thought and likely," Gough agreed. He laid a hand over the left side of his waist. "Your trouble is, the letter's here. Under my doublet."

Joliffe stared at Gough's lean-boned, strong-sinewed hand, browned and weathered and spotted with the beginnings of old age, laid over the smooth steel of the breastplate buckled and tied over the thick-padded doublet. Gough had sent word to Sir William Oldhall that he had something it would be worth the duke of York's while to have but someone must come for it. Now Joliffe was come but very plainly he could not yet have whatever it was. Not yet. Because whatever it was, Gough had not wanted it out of his keeping, even when going into a fight on London Bridge.

"Urn . . ." said Joliffe.

Gough patted his side. "This letter. If it were a cat, there'd be blooding among the pigeons when it's let loose. Beginning with that bastard-bred duke of Somerset, our king's thrice-damned governor of Normandy."

"He won't be for much longer," Joliffe said with feigned lightness. "Not at the speed he's losing the war there."

Gough's grim laugh agreed with that. "This letter has something to say about that, too, and it's yours when we've done this business with Cade. Rhys, get out Jankin's gear. This fellow can wear it."

Leaving the younger squire waiting with Gough's padded cap that would make his helmet sit more comfortably, the older squire had begun to shrug into his own padded doublet, but now he went to another chest while Gough said to Joliffe, "Killed at Formigny battle, was Jankin. Damn Somerset to Hell."

"I only came for the letter," Joliffe said carefully. "Not for fighting."

Gough gave him a dog-toothed grin. "Should have come sooner, then."

Joliffe eyed the dark red, padded doublet Rhys was bringing toward him, particularly misliking the black stain of old blood down its front.

"Took an arrow in the throat," Gough said, frowning at that same darkness. "If there's any justice this side of Hell, worse will happen to Somerset."

But in the meanwhile the letter Joliffe wanted was inside Gough's armor, with no way to come at it short of Gough unarming, and that was not going to happen; and with a grim vision of Gough going over London Bridge's edge into the black-running tidal water of the Thames, taking the letter with him, Joliffe began to unfasten his own doublet.

When setting him to this task, Sir William had told him not much beyond the bare fact that Matthew Gough had sent word that he had something that would tell York why the war in France was gone so fast and so far to the wrong. "Whatever it is," Sir William had said, "he isn't trusting it out of his hands, nor does he think it would be to his good or mine for him to be seen to have anything to do with my lord of York. That's why I need you to fetch it." Sir William had drummed impatient fingers on his desktop and said what he had said often enough before. "I would to all the saints that York wasn't gone to Ireland." Sent there as the king's lieutenant and effectively into exile, most probably because his even-handed rule while governor of Normandy—making a notable best of an incurably bad business—stood out too sharply against England's ill-governing by the lords around the king.

Or maybe it was simply enough that King Henry VI, after five years of marriage, had fathered no child, and that made those same lords uneasy, because until King Henry sired a son, Richard, duke of York, was his heir to the crown.

But there was a matter more than that. As corruption and ill-government took deeper hold around the king, men were beginning to remember that if King Henry's grandfather had not seized the throne for himself by force fifty years ago—if he had not wrenched the crown out of the right line of succession and taken the throne by right of arms, not by right of blood—Richard, duke of York and not even born then, would not now be heir to King Henry's crown.

He would be king.

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 other 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.