Revenge (13 page)

She felt a pressing desire to loose off a shot at the disgusting Huntley, who had brought his little army to a halt half a mile from the house. The big man conferred a while with his son and Ramage, and then a messenger on a grey pony came galloping to the house. He carried a white flag on a pole. As he drew closer Mary recognised him as John Deeping, the Sheriff’s envoy whom her husband had humiliated in the stocks at Lichfield.

Deeping appeared none the worse for his humiliation, though Mary had heard the people in the market-place had pelted him sore with stones and rotting vegetables. He reined in before the gate and raised his flag of truce.

“Dame Anne Bolton,” he shouted, “my master calls upon you to surrender this house. Comply at once, and you and yours will not be harmed.”

“Which master?” Dame Anne replied, leaning over the parapet. “That sack of wine yonder, or Sir John Stanley, whom I notice is absent from your company?”

Deeping’s face flushed. “You are ordered to surrender in the name of the King, who is master to us all!”

“But not to himself,” she replied calmly. “His Majesty is currently a prisoner in his own palace, and I know of no reason why he should wish to evict us, his loyal subjects, who have spilled so much blood in his cause.”

The envoy shook his head at her obduracy, and jerked his thumb at the soldiers behind him.

“If I carry such defiance back, these men will destroy you,” he said. “For God’s sake, madam, see reason. You cannot hope to stand against them.”

“God will decide the right,” she replied calmly, “and He has a greater power than halberds and gun-stones. Be off, and tell whatever masters you serve that I will not yield up my late husband’s house.”

Deeping turned his pony’s head and rode back to Huntley. Meanwhile Mary clattered down the steps to the yard. Her little brother Martin was there, handing out crossbows and bundles of quarrels from the back of a cart, and wearing an oversized kettle hat that made him look ridiculous.

“Make sure you stay out of harm’s way,” she ordered him as he handed her a crossbow. “You are the heir now, and must not be killed. Do you hear me?”

He nodded obediently. Mary gave him a warning look and ran to take up a post beside one of the shooting-holes bored into the wall.

Her view was restricted, but she could see part of Huntley’s army spreading out across the field as they jogged towards the house. The sun glinted off their helms and breastplates. They advanced in good order, like proper men-at-arms, and the foremost carried ladders and grapnels.

They clattered to a halt a bow-shot beyond the house. Mary thought Huntley must be ordering up his guns to blow a great hole in the wall, but had not reckoned on the man’s parsimony.

“The old miser doesn’t want to spend good money repairing avoidable damage,” she muttered to herself. She could hear him exhorting his soldiers to show no mercy. His hoarse voice died away, a trumpet rang out, and his men gave a great shout and charged.

Mary took careful aim at one man and loosed off a shot. Without waiting to see where it went, she stood up, placed a foot in the stirrup and wound back the draw-string. One of the maids, Alice, a dirty-faced girl with a foul tongue, screeched obscenities as she let fly a quarrel through the shooting-hole next to Mary’s. In other circumstances Mary would have reproved her, but good manners were the least of her concerns now.

“They are at the wall!” she heard John Clegg (another of Hodson’s men-at-arms) shout. She looked up to see him hurrying along the walkway, notching a shaft to his longbow.

He need not have worried, for Meg and two other maids had carried a great pot full of boiling porridge from the kitchen onto the wall. Mary heard them cackling as they upturned the contents onto the heads of the attackers. There was a flurry of high-pitched shrieks, followed by the noise of a ladder falling and bodies tumbling to earth.

Mary wanted to see what was happening. She climbed the steps to the walkway, fumbling another quarrel into the groove of her crossbow.

She peered over the battlements and saw that Huntley had only sent half his power against the house. He clearly hoped that sixty men was enough to carry the walls. If they were as fierce as they looked, that may have been the case, but most of his troops were mere county levies, and not over-keen on dying.

The defenders had already shot down a good number. Tanner had managed to put a ball through one man’s leg with his arquebus. Mary could hear the steward cursing in excitement as he poured fresh powder into the pan. The victims of Meg’s boiling porridge were being carried away by their comrades, shrieking in agony at the terrible burns on their hands and faces.

The remainder of Huntley’s assault party milled about uncertainly at the foot of the wall. Mary could see their spirit was draining away, and aimed her crossbow at one burly ruffian in back and breast and a pot helm. He hesitated with his foot on the lowest rung of a ladder, and looked up at the same time as she squeezed the trigger.

The quarrel flew straight and true into his open mouth. He fell backwards, choking on his blood. A pang of guilt and horror passed through Mary –
God forgive me
, she thought.
I have
just taken a life
– and then reached for another quarrel from the bundle at her waist.

Clegg appeared at her side and loosed another arrow, sending it clean through a man’s throat. That caused others to drop their bills and run. A wave of panic seized the rest. Within seconds they were all fleeing back across the field in shameful, disorderly rout, abandoning their ladders and leaving sixteen dead and wounded. Cheers and catcalls broke out along the wall, though Mary felt a twinge of pity for the wounded as they tried to crawl away, their bodies shot through with shafts.

“Sixteen to our none, not a bad tally,” Clegg said, grinning at her.

“They will come again,” she replied. She looked anxiously for Dame Anne, and was relieved to see her with Martin in the yard, safe and unharmed and helping him to wind a crossbow.

“That fat fool will be hard put to rally them,” said Clegg. “Look at them run!”

“Huntley still has his guns,” Mary reminded him. “Now the penny-pincher will have to use them. Yes – look.”

Huntley was indeed bringing up his guns, the serpentine – or ‘popgun on wheels’, as Hodson had described it – and the bombard, a squat iron tube mounted on a cumbersome wooden frame.

Under Huntley’s furious direction the teamsters brought the guns forward to within easy range of the house. Men in powder-stained leather jerkins and breeches unhitched and fussed about the guns, while others unloaded shot of various sizes and barrels of powder from a wagon.

Mary had seen guns before, but never heard one fired. She stared in horror at the enormous stone ball carried over to the bombard by three sweating crewmen. Two more were busy driving a thick wooden wedge into the earth behind it.”

“What are they doing?” asked Mary, pointing at the men working on the wedge.

“That is to cushion the recoil,” replied Clegg. “You had better stop up your ears when that thing goes off, my lady. It makes an unholy racket.”

They watched in helpless silence as the bombard and the serpentine were made ready to fire. The process was slow and laborious, but there was nothing the defenders could do to prevent it. The crews were beyond the range of their bows.

By now most of the survivors of the assault party had rallied and trickled back to their banners, sullen and shame-faced. Huntley the Younger and a few of his men-at-arms were chasing a few determined fugitives across the fields in the distance.

“Come, my lady,” said Clegg, touching Mary’s arm. “Let’s get off the walkway before we’re blown off it.”

They went down into the yard where the rest of the household were assembling, for Hodson had ordered everyone to evacuate the walls.

“Our best hope,” Mary heard him explain to her mother, “is that the men handling those guns don’t know their business as well as they should, and over-pack them with powder. Or that the barrels have cracks in them that have been overlooked. That way they might explode on firing.”

Dame Anne squinted up at the blue, cloudless sky. “Why can it not rain?” she implored. “Send rain, Lord, to spoil their powder and drown the Huntleys into the bargain!”

They stood and waited, crowded together like frightened rats waiting for a storm. At last there was a loud crack, like the firing of a large arquebus, followed by a whining noise and a muffled thump as something ploughed into the wall.

“That was the popgun,” said Hodson. “They may fire it all day, and make no more impression than two men working with hammer and chisel.”

An uneasy quiet fell again. They all knew what was coming. Mary’s nerves sang with tension at the waiting, and it was almost a relief when a deafening boom erupted in the distance.

A shadow like some enormous bird passed far overhead, briefly blotting out the sun. It plunged out of sight to land with a crash in the orchard behind the house.

“Overshot!” cried Hodson, clapping his hands. “Now God grant those handless baboons miss again, and burn up all their powder! How much shot do they have left, Clegg?”

“I counted twelve balls for the bombard,” Clegg replied gloomily.

The next shot was closer, and smashed a great hole in the roof of the hall, shattering costly tiles and ancient beams and causing one of the chimneys to collapse. They cried out at the awful ruin, especially Dame Anne, who knew how much money her husband had lavished on that roof.

Still, no lives had been lost. When the third shot missed the house completely, and the fourth, Mary was foolish enough to hope that God had listened to Hodson’s plea. But God mocked her. The fifth shot punched squarely into the middle of the outer wall, bringing it down in a great storm of dust and noise and shattered bricks.

Mary’s first thought, for which she later begged Christ for forgiveness, was to save her own skin. She was immediately reminded of her better self when Martin came staggering through the smoke, bleeding from a gash on his scalp. She grasped his hand and dragged him to the hall, the nearest sanctuary – though there was no true sanctuary, now the wall was breached.

Tanner reached the doorway first. He ushered them inside, his broad face ashen with fear.

Mary stopped and gasped at the scene of destruction. The stone ball that had dropped through the roof was squatting in the middle of the hall, having smashed a table to splinters and come to rest on the flagstones. The air was full of dust, and the floor strewn with rubble from the collapsed roof.

“Find somewhere to hide,” she bade Martin, pushing him away, “and stay there until I come and find you.”

He stubbornly shook his head and stayed with her as the sound of fighting and killing raged outside. Through the window she witnessed Huntley’s soldiers pouring through the breach. The household men-at-arms and the bravest of the servants were staging a desperate, doomed attempt to hold them back.

“Where is Dame Anne?” she shouted, but Tanner just gaped at her. His wits, such as they were, seemed to have deserted him.

Now Martin was safe, Mary wanted to go in search of her mother. She looked around for a weapon. Swords and pole-arms were no good, since she had no training in their use. She spotted one of the arquebuses lying on a table. It was primed to fire, with shot and wadding in the barrel and powder in the pan, and flint and tinder nearby. Shouting at Martin to go and hide, Mary crossed to the table and worked frantically to strike the match.

Someone screamed outside. Tanner ran to drop the heavy bar across the door. He was too slow, and the door flew open to admit a bareheaded soldier wearing the silver star of Ramage on his chest. His face was streaked with gore and dust, and the sword in his hand wet with blood.

Tanner grabbed a pole-axe from a rack and threw himself at the soldier, who side-stepped and thrust his sword into the steward’s swollen guts. Tanner fell, squealing and clutching at the length of steel stuck in his belly.

Mary had got the match lit. She lifted the gun to sight carefully along the barrel, as Hodson had taught her. She pulled the trigger. There was a bang and a flash, a terrible stink of burning powder in her nostrils, and the gun jerked in her hand.

The shot flew straight and true and hit the soldier on the temple, cracking his skull and taking off the top of his head. His face twisted into surprised expression as he flew backwards, almost into the arms of his mates piling through the door.

Martin uttered a shrill yell, drew his little knife and ran at the dying man to stab him as he lay twitching on the flagstones. One of the soldiers caught the boy’s wrist and picked him up by his neck.

“I’ve caught a rabbit, lads!” he shouted. “Shall we skin and eat him, or sell him at Lichfield market?”

He paid Mary no heed as she rushed at him, wielding her gun like a club, and smote him across the jaw with the butt. He lurched away, spitting blood and teeth. Martin wriggled free and ran to his sister.

Mary seized his wrist and turned to flee. There was nowhere to go. Hulking shapes surrounded her, ripped away her gun and held her fast.

14.

The silvery half-moon shone down on a barren stretch of the Devonshire coast, illuminating two longboats as they rowed into the shallows. Their parent vessel, a small square-sailed cog, stood half a mile out to sea, waiting patiently for them to return.