The bells of the Saint-Gatien cathedral rang out over Tours, a joyous sound that rippled on and on in complicated patterns that never repeated for the course of a full peal.
Derry watched placidly as the French princess came out and was escorted back to her waiting carriage with the bells and roaring crowd echoing all around her. She was smiling and weeping at the same time, which made Derry chuckle. If his own daughter had lived, she would have been about that age. The thought brought a stab of an old pain to his chest.
The French king and his most powerful lords came out to see the bride leave for Saumur Castle, the monarch already deep in conversation and surrounded by messengers running to and from the army waiting outside the city.
Derry’s thoughts were interrupted as a hand came down hard on his right shoulder. In the inns of east London, he’d have grabbed it and broken the small finger, but he resisted the impulse with an effort.
‘What have you done, in the king’s name, Derry Brewer?’ York hissed at him. ‘Tell me this is not so. Tell me that we haven’t just given up lands won back to good Englishmen by Henry of Monmouth.’
‘His son, our king, wanted a truce, Lord York, so yes, that is exactly what we have done,’ Derry replied. He removed the hand on his shoulder, deliberately squeezing the bones together as he did so. York grunted in pain, though he resisted the urge to rub his hand when he had it back.
‘This is treason. You will swing for this, along with that fool Suffolk.’
‘And the king at our sides, I suppose? Lord York, is it possible you have failed to comprehend the arrangement? Maine and Anjou are the price for twenty years of truce. Will you gainsay your own king in this? It is what he wanted. We who are his humble servants can only give way to the royal will.’
To his surprise, York stood back and smiled coldly at him.
‘I think you will discover that there are consequences to these games, Derry Brewer. Whatever you think you have accomplished, the news is out now. As your secret deals are heard, the country will know only that King Henry has given away territories won by his father — and by English blood, shed on the battlefields. They will say … Oh, I will leave you to work out what they will say. I wish you luck, but I want you to remember that I warned you.’ For a moment, York chuckled and shook his head. ‘Do you think they will go meekly, those Englishmen, just because a fat French lord points them back to Normandy? You have overreached yourself with your cleverness, Brewer. Men will die because of it.’
‘Are you selling lavender as well as prophecy? I ask because I would value a sprig of lavender and there are no gypsy women here.’
He thought York would lose his temper then, but the man merely smiled once more.
‘I have sight of you now, Derry Brewer. My men have sight of you. I wish you luck getting back to Calais, but I fear it is not with you today. All your bright magpie chatter will not serve you when we catch you up on the road.’
‘What an odd thing to say to me, Lord York! I will see you again in London or Calais, I’m certain. For the moment, though, the French king has invited me to accompany him on a hunt. I like him, Richard. He speaks English ever so well.’
Derry raised a hand to catch the attention of the French noble party. One of the barons saw and gestured in reply, calling him over. With a last insouciant raise of the eyebrows for York’s benefit, Derry strolled across to them.
Outside the town, the French army began to pack up its camp, ready to take command of more new land won in a morning than in the ten years before that day. Duke René was beaming as Derry reached the group. More than a dozen of his peers stood close around him, clapping him on the shoulders and calling their loud congratulations. To Derry’s surprise, the Frenchman had tears running down his pale cheeks. He saw Derry’s expression and laughed.
‘Oh, you English, you are too cold. Do you not understand I have my family land back today? These are tears of joy, monsieur.’
‘Ah, the best kind,’ Derry replied. ‘There was talk of a hunt when His Majesty invited me to accompany him?’
Duke René’s eyes changed subtly in the light.
‘I suspect His Majesty King Charles was amusing himself at your expense, monsieur. There will be no hunting of boar or wolves, not today. Yet His Majesty will accompany his army as they move north through my land. Who can say what English deer we will find shivering in my family fields and vineyards?’
‘I see,’ Derry said, his good humour vanishing. ‘I suspect I will not join you after all, Lord Anjou. If you don’t mind, I will remain here for a time, while I make arrangements to return home.’
He watched Richard of York striding away to give orders to the thousand men he had brought south. They too would withdraw to Normandy. The duke had no choice at all. For a moment, Derry had a sickening sense that York was not the fool he thought he was. There were many English settlers in Maine and Anjou, that much was true. Surely they would not be foolish enough to resist? The agreements King Henry had signed allowed for the peaceful uprooting of English families in the French provinces. Yet the mood of the nobles all around him was indeed that of a hunt. They showed their teeth and he could sense a febrile excitement in the air that worried him. Derry could taste nervous acid in his throat. If the English in Maine and Anjou refused to go, it could yet mean a war. All the work he had put in, all the months of scheming, would be wasted. The hard-won truce would last no longer than frost in summer.
8
For three days, the French army and York’s soldiers shadowed each other, moving north through Anjou. Duke Richard’s men pulled far ahead after that, in part because the French king stopped and held court in every town. The royal party made a grand tour of the Loire valley, making camp whenever King Charles saw something of interest or wished to see a church with the bones of a particular saint. The rivers and vineyards stretching over many miles of land gave him especial pleasure.
Hundreds of Anjou families were evicted by rough French soldiers running ahead of the main army. In shock and despair, they took to the roads in carts or on foot, a great stream of suddenly beggared subjects that only grew each day. York pulled his men back to the new border of English land in France, picketing them on the outskirts of Normandy as the flood of evacuees kept coming, filling every village and town with their misery and complaints. Some of them called angrily for justice from King Henry for their losses, but most were too stunned and powerless to do more than weep and curse.
The evictions went on and there were soon tales of rape and murder to add to the chaos and upheaval as the families came in. As the weeks passed, minor lords sent furious letters and messengers demanding that English forces protect their own, but York set them aside unread. Even if the evictions hadn’t been by decree of an English king, he wanted them to come home with their tales of humiliation. It would fan flames in England, making a fire that would surely consume Derry Brewer and Lord Suffolk. He did not know if the unrest would reach as far as the king himself, but they had brought it about between them and they deserved to be shamed and vilified for what they had done.
Each evening, York went to the church tower of Jublains and looked south over the fields. As the sun set, he could see hundreds of English men, women and children staggering towards the safe border, each with their own story of violence and cruelty. He only wished Derry Brewer or Suffolk, or even King Henry himself, could see what they had brought about.