THE TRAITOR'S TALE

Chapter One

Revolts and riots lesser and greater had been flaring and fading across the south and east of England all through the spring into this fine-weathered summer of 1450, but Jack Cade's rebellion had proved to be something more than all of them. Given a leader better than most and driven by years of rough injustices and this past year's failure of the war in France, men had gathered to him in their thousands and marched on London, demanding justice from the king and his lords; and the king and his lords had fled, had disappeared northward.

Their thought had maybe been that London would be safe enough with the wide river Thames and the towered gates and drawbridge of London Bridge to keep the rebels at bay; but four days ago London, angry enough at its own wrongs and angrier still at the king's betrayal, had opened the bridge's gates and let the rebels in.

And riding toward London, Joliffe had watched the sky, thinking to see smoke from burning buildings, expecting to meet with droves of escaping citizens. He had counted on learning from them how bad matters were in the city, but the few he met with were more interested in keeping going than talking, had seemed more grumbling that terror-struck. With that and the lack of any black towers of smoke, he chose to stop at an inn outside London's Newgate in hopes of learning more about what was happening in the city before going in himself.

The innkeeper, his business slack -- "You're the first traveler in here these three days past. Such folk as pass are going away from London, not to it." -- was more than happy to sit drinking the good wine Joliffe paid for and talk of what he knew. "Not that there's even been many of those, from what I've seen. Cade's kept his men under his hand, I'll say that for him. No rioting, robbing, and raping through the streets, if you know what I mean. That's small comfort, mind you to those as Cade set his men on purpose to pillage. Them as were rich enough and disliked enough for it. Malpas and that lot. Nor any comfort at all to the half-dozen or so men he's had killed." The innkeeper chuckled with deep satisfaction. "Not that anyone's minded Lord Saye's and that bloody thief Crowmer's heads hitting the pavement in Cheapside. There were more than rebels cheered that. Nor it hasn't hurt that Cade's seen to it his men have been paying for what they take otherwise -- food and drink and the like."

"You haven't been into London yourself to see how it's going?" Joliffe asked.

"Go into London now?" The innkeeper sounded disbelieving Joliffe could think him so short of wits. "Not likely! This isn't going to last, this love-match between London and Cade. Those he hasn't robbed are going to be wondering when it'll be their turn, and his men will be wanting more than drink and taking orders and chopping off a head now and again. No, hereabouts we're laying bets on when it's all going to turn uglier than it is. I want to be around to collect my winnings and I'm keeping out of London the while, thank you. If you've good sense, you'll do the same, man."

"Now there's a problem," Joliffe said cheerfully. "I gave up claim to good sense years ago." Instead of it, he paid for two nights' keep for his horse and set off on foot by way of Holborn bridge and to Newgate. The guards set there by Cade asked him his business, and his tale of needing to see how his aged aunt did -- "Or more to the point, how my hoped-for inheritance does." -- got him in without trouble.

"It's Cade's curfew soon, though," one of the guards said. "See you're out of the street by then or you'll be hustled over to Southwark with the rest of us."

"She only lives in Forster's Lane," Joliffe said with a wave of one hand and kept on going.

As the innkeeper had said, Cade seemed to be keeping his hold over his men, but the quiet in the streets was wrong. Where there should have been the city's late afternoon busy to-and-fro flow of people, bright-arrayed shop fronts, and crowding market stalls, there were barred house doors, shops blank-faced behind shutters, no crowding market stalls. The only places he saw open were taverns and a few cookshops, and almost the only people seemed to be rebels, and they were either drinking or else wandering as if at loss of what to do, those that weren't already drifting toward the London Bridge now that late afternoon shadows were beginning to fill the streets.

That was something both the innkeeper and gate-guard had warned him of -- Cade's order that every day by sunset his men were to withdraw across London Bridge, out of the city into Southwark. The order was maybe the more readily obeyed because all London's brothels were there, but for such as needed help remembering where they were supposed to be, Cade had his officers going through the streets to turn and herd them the right way.

Since Joliffe's way lay bridgeward -- but had nothing to do with any aged aunt -- no one troubled him. The worst he met with were four drunken men lurching along broad Cheapside arm in arm and singing together happily, even if not all the same song. They looked far enough gone to want any passer-by's company and be offended if it wasn't given, so Joliffe put a slight stagger into his own step and raised a hand in fellow-feeling as he passed them, in the hope that they would know a fellow drunk must have business as important as their own and leave him to it. They did, with a cheerfully shouted something at him as they passed. He cheerfully shouted something back, doubting they would get much farther before they were gathered up and sent toward Southwark. For himself, when he was far enough away to suppose they had by now forgotten him, he returned to his own long stride, out of Cheapside into Poultry and from there into the Stocks Market.

Five streets met there, but the one Joliffe wanted still went enough toward the bridge that he'd hoped to have no trouble, nor did he, save that men plainly Cade's officers were there before him, herding a score of men -- probably collected from the surrounding streets -- toward the street Joliffe wanted for himself. If he got herded with them, he might well find himself going over the bridge before he knew it; but he'd not for nothing spent years pretending to be a great many people besides himself. He set back his shoulders, lifted his head, changed to a bold stride, and crossed the market place like a man firmly about his business. As he passed the nearest of the officers, he raised a hand in easy greeting. The man lifted a hand in return and no one made him any challenge as he strode on, safely into Lombard Street.

The George Inn with its sign of an armored knight on a white horse, spearing a writhing dragon, was near the further end. Like everywhere along the street, its door was shut, its windows shuttered. For good measure, the gate into its yard was unwelcomingly closed, and when Joliffe knocked at it, a man on the other side demanded to know who he was and what he wanted.

"I've come to see Matthew Gough," Joliffe answered, half what the man had demanded but enough. There was a scrape and thud of a bar being pulled aside, and the gate opened just enough to let a very lean man slip through. Fortunately, Joliffe was and did, with the man shutting it on his heels while saying, "His rooms are the first along the gallery up there," and already reaching to put the bar in place again. 

The George was one of London's best inns. It stretched long along its cobbled yard, with stables and lesser guest rooms on the left, its public rooms on the right, sheltered from ill weather by an open gallery that ran the building's length, reached by stairs at both ends and lined with doors to the inn's best guest chambers that were sheltered in their turn by the eaves of the steep-pitched roof. Even in these strained days all was cleanly swept and cleanly kept, but where there should be people on the come-and-go, and talk and laughter from the tavern-room, and servants on the move, the empty yard, the crushed, taut silence, the servant on guard at the gate; a wary face at a lower window were unsettling, and Joliffe went quickly up the stairs and along the gallery to the first door there.

It stood open to a well-sized room, probably the inn's best, low-ceilinged under golden oak beams but with a wide window overlooking the street. There were clean rushes underfoot, a curtained bed, a table and chair and several stools, and space along the walls for travelers' chests and baggage to be set, though presently table and chair were shoved aside, leaving the room's middle to a large chest from which a man was just lifting an elegantly curved breastplate undoubtedly meant for the man standing, already in a thickly padded arming doublet while a third man knelt behind him, buckling the straps of a leg harness around his thigh.
Joliffe rapped at the doorframe. They all turned toward at him. The man holding the breastplate was the youngest and not very young -- somewhere around Joliffe's own age. The other two were nearer sixty years than not, with faces rough-worn by weather and hard living that looked to have agreed with them.

"Master Gough?" he asked.

The man standing to be put into his armor answered, "I am, yes. You want what?"

The Welsh of his younger years was still in his voice despite the decades he had spent in France as one of England's great captains in the war now being so headlong lost there, and the other two men must be his squires.

Joliffe went into the room, away from the door, before he answered, "I'm from the duke of York."

"Are you?" said Gough, committing to nothing.

Joliffe answered the question behind that question with, "Sir William said I should remind you about the damoiselle in Caen."

Gough laughed and a taut wariness went out of him. "I remember. Though I did have hope Sir William had forgotten." The kneeling squire went back to buckling the leg harness' straps behind Gough's thigh and the other squire came to fit the breastplate over Gough's chest. "So you're York's man," Gough said past him. "Any good with a sword?"

"I've been taught."

"By anyone who knew what they were doing? Or catch as catch can?"

Finished with the leg harness, the older squire stood up and went to the chest for another piece of armor.

Joliffe named a name.

Gough looked up in surprise from helping his squire shifted the breastplate to lie most comfortably against his waist. "He had you in hand? How did that come about?"

"Someone I once worked for thought I should have that skill to add to my others."

"Did he?" Gough had likely survived years of battles, raids, and changes of lords over him by not only how well he fought but by how well he could assess the worth and skills of men around him when their lives and likely his own might depend on how right he was. Just now he was assessing Joliffe. "Does my lord of York know this?"

Evenly, Joliffe answered, "I'd not tell you something about myself that my lord of York didn't know.".

The older squire brought the backplate that went with the breastplate. He and the other squire began to buckle the pieces together at Gough's shoulder while Gough's look held on Joliffe and Joliffe's held on him, until finally Gough said, "So he knows, and here you are." He raised his arms for his squires to come at the straps and buckles at his side. "I'd trust York's judgment before I'd trust most other men's. So. You'll have your chance to use that sword-skill tonight."

Among things Joliffe preferred to avoid was chance to use his sword-skills, and blandly, deliberately misunderstanding, he asked, "You mean I'm to fight you for whatever it is you wanted Sir William to know? My lord of York will have to find himself another messenger, then. I don't favor being too dead to take it to him."

Gough chuckled. "Not me. No. Cade's had his chance in London and tonight he's losing it. We're taking the bridge back from the rebels."

"I can't say I see the four of us having much likelihood of that," Joliffe said. "Begging your pardon for doubting your skill as a fighter, of course."

"What are you? York's jester?" No longer prickly with doubt, Gough was in sudden good humour. One to a side, his men were now fastening armor around his upper arms. "No, I've gone back and forth much of today between Lord Scales in the Tower and the mayor and his men at the Guildhall to set this up."

"Him being about the only man who could go freely back and forth from one to the other," the older squire said. Some cur among the rebels would challenge him, ''Who are you and where are you bound?', and he'd come back at 'em, 'Matthew Gough, new-come back from France. Who are you?'"

The other squire laughed. "There wasn't one of them didn't know who he was and gave him way."

"There's many of them been in France themselves," Gough said. "They know who's at fault for there and here, and the shame is we're against them when we ought all to be against the curs around the king who've brought us to it. But Cade shouldn't have taken to robbing one rich man after another through the city. Your London merchants will lie down for a lot but make them afraid for their wealth and they'll fight. Even Lord Scales, whatever else he's been ordered, isn't minded to let London go to ruin in front of him."

"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.

"Um . . ." 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 of 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 the Sixth, 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 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 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 he 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 some day 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 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, and 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 from both sides.

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 Tower 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 cosyning 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 go 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 Rhys 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 worse 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."

"There's fate," Rhys agreed bitterly. "Send someone for a priest. We're taking him to his room."

The climb up the stairs with Gough's body fairly well finished the last of Joliffe's strength, he thought. Until he crossed the threshold into Gough's room. At sight of the strewn chaos -- chair and table and joint stools overset, bedding and mattress stripped from the bed and dumped into a heap against the wall, everything that had been in the chests dumped and scattered across the floor, the chests themselves up-ended -- he jerked to a halt. Behind him Owen started, "What . . ." and Joliffe forced himself forward.
Like him both Rhys and Owen stopped on the threshold. Then Rhys snapped, "Let's get him in," and they carried Gough's body to the bed, laid it on the floor long enough for the three of them to put the mattress and a sheet back in place, then lifted Gough's body onto them.

Only then did Rhys take a long look around and swear, "Bastards and curs!" while Owen started shaking his head in silent protest and went on shaking it. Joliffe settled for righting a joint stool and sinking onto it, his legs done for a while. Slowly, he set to ridding himself of helmet, arming cap, and brigantine, dropping them onto the floor beside him.

Of nobody in particular, Owen demanded, "What happened?"

"Robbery," Rhys answered dully. He began to take off his own gear. "Only they didn't find anything, because we've put it all somewhere safer than here."

"Then when they didn't find anything, they came and killed him," Owen said. "Bastards."

"That makes no sense," Rhys said.

Nor did it; but neither of them were any more ready for thinking than Joliffe was. Owen joined Rhys in stripping down to their arming doublets and hosen. With hair sweat-plastered to their heads and shirts to their bodies, they looked very much the way Joliffe supposed he looked, and certainly for a moment they stood as slackly as he felt, until Rhys said with a nod at Gough's body, "Let's have him out of his armor anyway."

Taking Gough's armor off him after a fight was something they had surely done many times before now, but this time, the last time, their fingers were slowed by weariness and the weight of their grief and Rhys' sometimes-falling tears as he bent to the work.

Joliffe saw them but made no move to help. He had no place here. Gough and Rhys had likely started young together in the war; had maybe been surprised to find themselves both alive at the end of it; had probably talked of what they'd do with themselves now it was over; and now, when least looked for, all that could be planned was where to bury Gough and how many Masses for his soul could be afforded.

Joliffe had known Gough too briefly for grief anything like Rhys' and Owen's must be. What he had instead was a slowly growing anger at the way Gough had died and he kept that to himself, leaving the two squires to their grief and duty until Rhys lifted off Gough's breastplate and set it aside. Then Joliffe forced himself to his feet and said, "You can come at that letter now. I still want it."

Both squires turned to stare at him. Owen started angrily to say something, but Rhys said first, "Best you have it. Yes."

He made quick work of unfastening the front of Gough's arming doublet to come at a thin, many-folded square of parchment tucked tightly into the waist of Gough's braies. He pulled it out, faced Joliffe, and thrust it at him with, "This is what they killed him for this, isn't it? They didn't find it here, came to kill him at the bridge, and meant to throw him into the Thames to be rid of him and it together. That was the way of it, wasn't it?"

His gaze locked to Rhys', Joliffe took the thing from him with slowly nodded, silent agreement.

"Then if I were you," Rhys said grimly, "I'd watch my back from here to wherever you're going with it." And turned back to Gough's body and what still needed to be done.

READ CHAPTER TWO