Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors Read Online Free PDF Page B

mercy, he would not hesitate. Brewer had seen that in him and it was true. Warwick had captured kings before. He saw them as mere men.
    He thought perhaps there was not another in England who understood the world so well as he did then. If an earl could create a king, he could not love him too.
    Warwick smiled to himself, turning away from the fevered tumult of the crowd below. In that sea of faces, in their yelling and their murmuring, it was easy to think of chickens in a coop, or perhaps the buzzing of hives. Yet they were men and women, once chosen to tend a garden, with foolishness and pride enough to steal the one fruit forbidden to their hand.
    Warwick followed the guards down to the waiting coaches. As he did so, his smile twisted, growing bitter. Perhaps there
were
no kings, not without men to follow them. Men dreamed such things from dust – and then forgot that they were dreamers. They put foxes in with chickens and then just laughed and laughed as blood was shed.
    As soon as his footmen saw him in the shadow of the Tower gatehouse, they stepped in smartly with lowered staves, pressing the crowd away to let the earl through to his horse. A dozen knights in full armour waited on horseback, watching for the first sign of violence in the heaving mob, ready to charge, glowering around them at anyone who strayed too close. King Edward was loved. God knew it and so did Warwick. For all his excesses and cruelties, that giant in his armour, still only twenty-eight, could turn a crowd to his side with one grand gesture or one call to battle. There would surely be some there who might give their lives for such a master. Warwick’s followers were twitchy and nervous, seeing threat in every drunken shout.
    On a black gelding, a young man waited with them, blade-slim and hardened over the previous year. George, Duke of Clarence, leaned over his saddle pommel as he idled away the time, resting on his forearms and staring over the heads of the people, as far as he could see beyond. London was clotted with houses, guilds, inns, workshops and storehouses, all crammed in along a river that carried goods to lands most of them would never see. Lenses were ground there, clocks made, glass blown, stone carved, meat sliced and dried. It was a busy place, as a forgotten leg of pork can be busy in the hot sun, giving life to all those within it.
    George of Clarence did not look pleased at whatever he saw, though Warwick could not discern whether it was the press of the commons or some internal thorn that pricked athim. Warwick forced a smile as his son-in-law glanced over and straightened.
    ‘They made me think of lions or bears with their roaring, when I was up on the wall,’ Warwick said. ‘I can hardly imagine what it must have been like down here.’
    His daughter’s husband began to shrug, then reconsidered, remembering his manners.
    ‘They are loud enough, my lord, and brash, these Londoners. None too clean, either, some of them. I have been offered a dozen different kinds of food for coin and there are beggars and urchins and …’ He waved a hand, lacking the words to describe the variety all around them.
    ‘Be thankful they are cheering along with us,’ Warwick said. Like his guards, he did not enjoy the swell of the crowd, so like the movement of a tide that might snatch a man away into its depths, or rise in a great wave with no awareness for whoever was swept up into it.
    ‘I have seen them roused to rage and hatred, George, as when Lord Scales poured wildfire down upon their heads, not a dozen yards from where we stand today.’ Warwick shuddered at the memory of men and women on fire, their screams rising until their lungs drew only flame. Lord Scales had not survived that night. His gaolers had stood aside and let the mob into his cell.
    ‘Did you speak to the king, sir?’ George asked carefully. He was not used to the word, not for Henry of Lancaster. Warwick turned away from the festivities and clapped his