Margaret of Anjou Read Online Free PDF Page A

himself again, with satisfaction. Young men came to rule.

C HAPTER 2

    D erry Brewer was in a foul mood. The rain poured down in sheets, drumming against the bald dome of his head. He had never realized before how a good head of hair really soaked up the rain. With his pate so cruelly exposed, the dreadful pattering made his skull ache and his ears itch. To add to his discomfort, he wore a sodden brown robe that slapped wetly against his bare shanks, chafing the skin. His head had been shaved by a fairly expert hand just that morning, so that it still felt new and sore and appallingly exposed to the elements. The friars trudging along with him were all tonsured, the white circles of scalp gleaming wetly in the gloom. As far as Derry could tell, none of them had eaten a morsel of food since dawn, though they had walked and chanted all day.
    The great walls of the royal castle lay ahead up Peascod Street as they rang their bell for alms and prayed aloud, the only ones foolish enough to stand out in the rain when there was shelter to be had. Windsor was a wealthy town; the castle it existed to serve was only twenty miles from London, like half a dozen others around the capital, each a day’s march apart. The presence of the king’s household had brought some of the very best goldsmiths, jewelers, vintners, and mercers out of the capital city, eager to sell their wares. With the king himself in residence, more than eight hundred men and women in his service swelled the crowds and raised the prices of everything from bread and wine to a gold bracelet.
    In his sour humor, Derry assumed Franciscan friars would be attracted by the flow of coins as well. He was still unsure if his grubby companions were not just rather clever beggars. It was true Brother Peter harangued the crowds for their iniquity and greed, but the rest of the friars all carried knives to sell as well as begging bowls. One wide-shouldered unfortunate seemed resigned to his role among them as the carrier of a large grindstone. Silent Godwin walked with it on his back, tied on with twine and so bowed down that he could hardly look up to see where he was going. The others said he endured the weight as penance for some past sin and Derry had not dared ask what it had been.
    At the intervals of abbey services throughout the day, the group would stop and pray, accepting offers of water or home-brewed beer brought out to them as they assembled a treadle and set the stone spinning, sharpening knives and blessing those who passed over a coin, no matter how small. Derry felt a pang of guilt about the tight leather purse he wore snug and close to his groin. He had silver enough in there to feed them all to bursting, but if he brought it out, he suspected Brother Peter would give it away to some undeserving sod and leave the monks to starve. Derry puffed out his cheeks, wiping rain from his eyes. It washed down his face in a constant stream, so that he had to blink through a blur.
    It had seemed like a good idea to join them four nights before. As a result of their humble trade, the group of fourteen monks were all armed. They were also used to nights on the road where thieves might try to steal even from those who had nothing. Derry had been lurking in the stables of a cheap tavern when he’d overheard Brother Peter talking about Windsor, where they would pray for the king’s recovery. None of them had been surprised another traveler would want to do the same, not with the king’s soul in peril and all the country so beset with violent men.
    Derry sighed to himself, rubbing hard at his face. He sneezed explosively and caught himself opening his mouth to curse. Brother Peter had taken a stick to a miller just that morning for shouting a blasphemy on the open street. It had been Derry’s pleasure to see the meek leader of the group exercise a wrath that would have made him a minor name in the fight rings of London. They’d left the miller in the road, his ears leaking