Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors by Conn Iggulden Page B

each buttock. It had been made for hard riding, but it also served to keep his backside clear of splinters. The doublet jacket was comfortable enough, cut deceptively wide to allow a swordsman to move freely. At intervals, he worked his jaw against the high collar, rubbing the dark-blond bristles against the linen weave. He would have to shave again soon, though the experience left his skin raw as a plucked goose.
    His back was hurting. He shifted uncomfortably to ease it, from right to left, increasingly bored and irritated. On a normal evening, he imagined the tavern talk and laughter would have drowned the squeals and rhythmic thumping coming from the rooms above. Yet with King Edward’s guards glowering at anyone who moved or spoke, most of the regular drinkers had slipped away. The bloody-minded few who remained were determined not to notice anything. They emptied tankards of ale at a steady rate, keeping their gaze on the rush-covered floor.
    The noises above built to an extraordinary crescendo, every note as clear through the thin walls as if they stood in the bedroom with the king. The tavern girls had not been particularly striking, Richard recalled, despite the rumour that had brought the royal hunt to their door. Still, they showed enthusiasm enough when they saw who would takethem upstairs. Edward was known to be generous, if he liked a whore and felt he was liked in return. The results were to be heard. Richard wondered if his brother was strangling one of them, by the noise she made. Part of him wished he would, just to keep her from screaming like a vixen in heat.
    It was an unworthy thought and Richard sighed to himself. His brother brought out the worst in him sometimes, though the big clod could change his mood with just a smile or a word. Both men and women went in awe of his brother. When Richard stood close by Edward’s side, eclipsed and forgotten, he was free to observe their wide eyes and trembling hands. There was no shame in bending a knee, he thought, especially to a king anointed by God. It sometimes seemed to Richard that all men were made to kneel, that all they really desired was a shepherd who would keep them safe and take his cudgel to the wolves that threatened them. In exchange, Edward could have their daughters for his sport and they would not complain.
    Richard shook his head, rolling his neck until it cracked and feeling the bunched strength of his shoulders. When he had been a boy, he had suffered terribly with a twisted spine. His father’s remedy had been for him to build such a pack of muscle and sinew that he could throw a blacksmith’s anvil across a yard. The pain had not gone, nor eased, so that he lived each day with spikes of it running along his flesh and into the bones themselves. Yet he had grown as strong as his father wanted. Just weeks from his eighteenth birthday, there were few of Edward’s guards who relished a bout with Richard any longer. Slim-waisted and fast, he was a thinking warrior, always looking for the place to put the blade. None of his bouts lasted long and he knew he frightened older men who felt the touch of winter in their limbs. His spring was still ahead.
    Richard let himself slump further. If Edward had wanted, the two sons of York could have led the English and Welsh on a great crusade against the blasphemous Mahometans, or against France, or, by God, to the ends of the earth. The tragedy was that his brother preferred to ignore and to waste all he had gained. Edward was only truly happy in the deep wood or the wild moors, with his dogs and falcons and trusted men all about him.
    Standing in the shadow of a king was not quite the joyful experience Richard had imagined when he had been a boy and a ward of Earl Warwick. His brother then had been in real peril, beset on all sides by Lancaster enemies. Only Edward’s strong right arm, only his faith and his honour had brought him through, though tens of thousands lay where they had fallen, gone to