Revenge (7 page)

The house was rough comfort, a bachelor’s abode with few refinements. Mary found the hall stuffy and in dire need of airing, the chimneys and floors unswept, the larders nigh-empty save for a few stale cheeses, dried-up flitches of bacon, and one or two barrels of head-splittingly strong ale.

“God save us,” she cried when she first entered the hall, clapping a hand over her nose at the stench of rotting rushes and stale beer. “Has this place been aired in a twelvemonth? Open the windows, in Christ’s name, and fetch some sweet herbs to hang about the place. Why is there no fire in the hearth? Leap to it!”

Her heat was directed at an old serving-man, sixty years if he was a day, who gaped stupidly and ducked his head at her. There were also a couple of sluttish maids, who were rather prettier under their layers of grease and dirt than Mary cared for.

She soon had the servants skipping to her tune, sweeping and dusting and mopping, and was satisfied that the house might one day be rendered habitable. The sluts were turned out of doors and replaced with stout, reliable girls from the village whose diligence matched their plain looks.

Henry was grateful for his wife’s attentiveness, if slightly baffled. He was the type of young man who would happily live in a sty, so long as enough beer and meat was at hand. He was often away at Heydon Court, where Richard summoned him for private conferences.

For all their secrecy, they could hide little from Dame Anne, who correctly supposed their intentions and warned Mary of them in one of her frequent letters:

“To my well-beloved daughter, be this delivered in haste
.

Daughter Mary, I greet you well, and send you a gift of black hosecloth, to which you may improve your husband’s apparel, and replace the poor and ragged breeks I have oft seen him in.

I write to let you know that Henry and your brother continue their privy meetings, and are much together, and speak in low voices in Richard’s bedchamber, the which I am too proud to eavesdrop. Even so, they hide nothing from me, who was wise and bitter in the ways of this world before either was born.

Daughter, I suspect them of hatching some design against our neighbours, and of intending to mount an assault upon them as soon as Richard is hale again. Mauley is deep in their conspiracy. His loyalty is to Richard now, not me. He and certain other men in the household have been busy of late, riding to and from the house with messages, the content of which I know nothing, nor the recipients. You heard Richard make his vow – Huntley, Ramage and Malvern are ‘marked men’, so he said, and there never was a Bolton that broke a pledge.

You know your father was sunk in a mire of litigation against Sir Thomas, and that his constant seeking redress at law for offences, some real, some imagined, were a leech on the family coffers. Old Malvern is a close and subtle man, and I don’t doubt he seeks to regain his eminence and former office. If Richard was to commit some folly against him or his friends, Malvern would seize upon it, and strive to bring us down.

Daughter, we are isolated in a sea of foes. If our neighbours combined and came against us in force of arms, who could we look to for allies? Your husband is our only friend, and we his. Our lord the Duke is engaged on the King’s affairs, and we cannot look to him for help.

I pray you, exercise all your influence on him – the influence only a wife can exercise – and wean him from this folly. Cleave to him, and find reasons to keep him from Heydon Court until Richard’s current mood has passed, and I have turned his mind to lighter matters.

God keep you.

Your mother, Anne Bolton.”

The Duke of Buckingham was indeed engaged on the King’s affairs, for in the spring of that year the clouds of war gathered anew over England. The news that reached Mary at Sedgley was confused and fragmentary, but by the end of May it became clear that the Earl of Warwick, York’s great ally, had destroyed the royal fleet at Sandwich. Thus there was nothing to stop him crossing from Calais with an army, and the port of Sandwich itself had been seized and garrisoned by Yorkist troops under Lord Fauconberg, to act as a staging-post for Warwick’s invasion.

The news was dismaying, for Mary had hoped that peace would reign in England after York’s discomfiture at Ludford Bridge.

It was in this tense, uncertain atmosphere that she tried to dissuade her husband from going to Heydon Court and listening to whatever poisons Richard was dripping into his ear.

Henry would have none of it. Gentle as he was, and Mary’s devoted servant in many respects, there was a core of stubbornness to him that she never succeeded in overcoming.

“No, not for my soul’s price,” was his answer when she cornered him after supper one evening, and demanded to know what passed between him and her brother during their meetings.

“You need not be so coy,” she said angrily, “for my mother has already divined your intention. Richard plans some foolish stroke against Malvern and his friends, and has lured you into his plot.”

“I have the greatest respect for Dame Anne,” he replied, not meeting her eye, “but she must learn not to interfere with matters that no longer concern her. Richard is the master of Heydon Court now. His word is the law.”

Mary stamped her foot, upsetting Henry’s favourite wolfhound, Galahad, where he lay sprawled before the fire. “His word counts for naught if none choose to follow him!” she shouted. “For the second time of asking, Henry, will you tell me what he intends? It concerns all of us.”

He screwed his eyes shut, gulped down some more wine, and gave a little shake of his head. “I swore an oath,” he muttered, “a solemn oath. You know I hold my word sacrosanct, Mary.”

And that was all. Nothing could persuade Henry to break with his honour, no matter how much she cursed and railed at him and denied him his rights as a husband. He was too gentle to force himself on his wife, and so abandoned the marriage bed and took to sleeping by the fire in the hall, which caused much nudging and exchange of knowing glances among the servants.

Thus did matters lie between them, until one morning Mary woke to find her husband gone, and his pallet next to the fire unslept in.

8.

Three men waited in the gardens of Whiteladies nunnery, watering their horses in the fishpond and taking their ease in the warm June sun. All three were armed for war, in brigandines and with daggers and falchions in their belts, and wore badges displaying the white hawk of Bolton on their breasts. Mauley was the eldest, but the other two were mere youths, pale and nervous under their ill-fitting sallets.

“When will he come out?” said one of the youths, whose name was Piers, toying with the knife at his belt. “We’ve been idling here for almost an hour.”

“Perhaps he fears us, and has chosen to skulk inside the nunnery until we go away,” his mate Alan suggested hopefully.

Mauley threw away the remnant of the apple he had been gnawing. “You two make me despair for the youth of England,” he cried. “Where are your guts, lads? Would you rather be abed?”

“Yes,” Piers answered frankly, “or in a tavern somewhere. I’m not suited to this work, and would to God our master had never asked it of us.”

Mauley slapped the hilt of his dirk. “I’ll do the work. All you heroes have to do is keep a look-out, and help me if I call for it. Which I won’t. This will be as easy as skinning a rabbit.”

He turned away to watch the doors of the nunnery. Whiteladies was a pretty place, if small, nestling in an isolated wooded valley a few miles west of Tutbury. The stone church had a tiled and gabled roof, and the square cloister and dormitory were enclosed by a high wall encrusted with ivy.

The men had come here on the orders of their master, Richard Bolton, to ambush young John Huntley, until recently Mary Bolton’s fiancée. Richard happened to know that Huntley was in the habit of visiting his sister, a novice at Whiteladies, on the third Friday of every month. He also knew that the insufferably arrogant Huntley hardly ever travelled with any guards or servants.

Time passed sluggishly, but at last the doors swung open and a young nobleman jogged nimbly down the steps. He was lean and muscular and of medium height, girlishly pretty, with a neatly trimmed russet beard, and dressed in a purple velvet doublet, black hose and a short fur-trimmed black cloak. A sword hung at his waist, and his hand rested lightly on the pommel as he strode across the grass, whistling a merry tune.

Mauley raised his gloved right hand in greeting and went to meet him. The young man stopped and frowned.

“A word, Master Huntley,” cried Mauley. His craggy face, all harsh ridges and bony angles, broke into an alarming smile.

“I know you,” said Huntley, shading his eyes to peer at the large, intimidating figure approaching him. “You’re one of Bolton’s retainers, though your name escapes me. What do you want?”

“It’s Mauley, sir, Nicholas Mauley,” the other replied cheerfully. “I have a message for you from my master.”

“If it concerns his sister, then I have no interest in…” Huntley’s words died in his throat as Mauley drew a long-bladed dirk and slashed the edge across the young man’s left cheek.

Huntley shrieked, bringing startled female faces to the windows of Whiteladies, and clutched at Mauley’s neck. The old soldier contemptuously shrugged him off and slashed his other cheek.

“That’s for the death of Edward Bolton,” Mauley whispered as he kicked Huntley’s legs from under him, “and your disrespect to his daughter, and your treachery to the King.”

Mauley stood back to admire his handiwork, planting his hands on his hips and cocking his head to one side. “Not so comely any more, are you?” he said. “Farewell!”

A woman screamed inside the nunnery. Leaving Huntley in a shuddering, blood-soaked heap, Mauley ran for the shady grove where he and the others had tethered their horses.

“Have you killed him?” asked Piers as they unfastened their reins.

“No, I just cut him up a bit,” Mauley replied, climbing into the saddle, “but he will think carefully before offending the Boltons again.”

***

“Trust your judgment?” shouted Dame Anne. “Do my ears fail me, as well as my son? I shall never trust your judgment again!”

Her anger had little effect on Richard, who stood leaning against the doorframe of his mother’s Scriptorium. “That saddens me,” he said coolly, “for I have only just begun. What happened to John Huntley was but the first shot of my campaign.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You have run mad. The blow you suffered to your head at Blore Heath must have affected your wits. Huntley’s father will complain to the Sheriff, and he will come in search of Mauley. We will be heavily fined and Mauley will be imprisoned, maybe even hanged.”

“Let the Sheriff do his worst,” said Richard. “You have too much faith in the power of the law. What has it done to protect us in recent times? Nothing. The walls of the castle are broken down, mother, and we are left to shift as best we can.”

“Shift where, and who with?” she shot back. “We have no allies save your brother-in-law.”

“Unseasonable talk,” he said complacently. “Perhaps we lack allies in this part of the county, where the Yorkists are thick as fleas on a dog, but I have been at work. I dispatched Mauley with messages to elsewhere in Stafford, and to Chester, Leicester, Derby and Lancaster. Threescore knights and esquires have answered my call to arms. All stout men, who love the King well and despise York. ”

With that, Richard closed the door on her, ignoring the sharp rebukes and oaths that flew after him, and sauntered down the passage into the hall. He felt well pleased with himself. He could walk and ride again with relative ease, and the pain of his wound had receded to a persistent throb in his lower back. True, his head still ached, and he sometimes struggled to retain his balance. Nor did he get much sleep. He still suffered the most appalling nightmares, and his tired mind was restless, forever inventing and revising new stratagems against those he had marked for punishment.

The hall had been cleared of furniture, save some long benches against the walls, and turned into an armoury. Seven pole-arms of various sorts – halberds, glaives and spears – stood against one wall, and three crossbows hung from pegs. There was plenty more war-gear: swords and knives and poniards, steel sallets, back and breasts and leather jacks. In one corner, hanging from a rack and given pride of place, was the late Edward Bolton’s harness, lovingly cleaned and polished.

A country gentleman of modest estate, Edward had not been able to afford the very best and up-to-date gear, such as worn by the wealthiest nobles of the land. His was in a style that had been out of fashion for over a century, including a pig-nose bascinet (a helm shaped like a pig’s snout), and a curved breastplate and steel coverings for the arms and thighs.

Edward’s father had purchased the harness, thinking it appropriate for a gentleman to own, but as the son of a tradesmen and untutored in arms he had never worn it. The Boltons had only been warriors for two generations, something Richard felt slightly ashamed of. He was determined to wipe out the memory of his family’s humble origins, and prove himself worthy to rank alongside men whose martial ancestry went back centuries.

Henry of Sedgley was sitting on a bench, studying one of the arquebuses that the steward had bought in Lichfield.