Revenge (8 page)

“Devilish things,” he muttered, flicking the serpentine, the S-shaped piece of metal attached via a pivot to the side of the gun, and sighting down the length of the short barrel. Richard’s little brother Martin was sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying on a sallet much too big for his head and staring in childish wonder at his reflection in the polished metal.

“We have not won Dame Anne’s approval, then,” said Henry, carefully setting aside the gun as Richard came in.

“No, but nor do we require it,” Richard replied shortly. “She may rail and curse and cluck her tongue as much as she pleases. This is not her affair.”

Henry shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “I still have no word from Mary at Sedgley, which is a bad sign. It is a hard thing for a husband to admit, but I fear my wife’s temper.”

“You can’t go back to her yet,” said Richard. “You swore an oath to follow me in this enterprise.”

“I know, I know,” Henry sighed. “So when do we attack Malvern Hall?”

“Not yet. We wait for the Sheriff’s reaction first. I know Malvern’s ways. He will go to law before all else. Huntley senior would prefer to seek revenge for his son without official aid, but Sir Thomas will overrule him.”

“You seem confident that you know these men, and can predict their actions.”

“So I am. They are as predictable as they are vain. Sir Thomas wants to recover his old office as a justice. Our assault on young Huntley is a perfect opportunity for him to show his worth to the Sheriff, and thus regain his favour.”

Henry’s broad forehead creased as he mulled this over. “It occurs to me that you are dancing on the lion’s lip,” he said doubtfully. “Why give your enemy such an opportunity?”

Richard smiled, and ruffled Martin’s hair. “Wait and see,” he replied, “I have handed Malvern a sword; now all that remains is for him to fall on it.”

That afternoon a messenger from the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, Sir John Stanley of Elford, arrived at Heydon Court. Mauley admitted the messenger into the yard, where Richard and Henry met him, flanked by Tanner and the rest of the household men-at-arms.

Stanley had dispatched a young man, about Richard’s age, stern and confident on a high-stepping black courser. He had two soldiers carrying lances at his back, mounted on smaller horses, and looked down his finely sculpted nose at the men assembled in the yard.

“Which one of you is Richard Bolton?” he demanded.

“I am,” said Richard, stepping forward to seize the courser’s bridle. “And you are?”

The messenger’s sallow cheeks went pink at Richard’s insolence. “My name is John Deeping,” he replied. “I carry a writ for the arrest of one Nicholas Mauley, a man in your service, for the assault and wounding of John Huntley. Is the miscreant here?”

Richard gestured at Mauley, who stepped forward and executed a bow worthy of a courtier. Deeping briefly looked him up and down.

“Here is my writ,” he said, producing a large square of parchment with a wax seal dangling from it. “Mauley will come with me to Stafford, to explain his conduct to the Sheriff.”

“You’re a brave man,” said Richard, stroking the courser’s neck, “but Mauley stays here.”

Deeping’s eyes bulged. “It’s not a request!” he exclaimed. “I am charged with formal authority, to bring this man to justice. Do you defy the law?”

“There is no justice in England anymore,” Richard replied. “If there was, my father would still be alive, and the traitors that infest this realm would be crow-bait. No justice, save that a man creates for himself. I thank you for your office, John Deeping, but you have my leave to depart.”

Deeping was plainly not used to such defiance. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly. “I shall return tomorrow,” he said, recovering his voice. “By then I pray your madness will have passed.”

“Not such a fool as he looks,” Richard remarked as they watched the messenger spur away, followed by his men. “He didn’t curse, or threaten, or stay a moment longer than he needed to. Still, the Sheriff has made the first throw.”

He beckoned at Mauley. “Ride out at once,” he ordered, “and tell our friends to come to Heydon Court, in all haste, armed and ready for war.”

Mauley nodded and led the other men-at-arms towards the stables. “Come, brother of mine,” Richard said cheerfully to Henry, who was looking uncertain. “All will come right. We have planned this for many weeks.”

True to his word, John Deeping returned at noon the following day with six soldiers at his back. During his absence Heydon Court had been turned into an armed camp. Neat lines of white tents occupied the large meadow west of the house, and groups of armed men were sparring and drilling in the fields.

Richard watched Deeping’s approach, and went out to meet the little band of horsemen when they reached the gates. He had donned his father’s harness, full plate and mail, and his father’s broadsword was strapped to his hip. He rode a white destrier, Gwen, recently purchased from a Stafford horse-dealer to replace the horse killed at Blore Heath.

Deeping was not easily cowed. “What is this, Bolton?” he shouted. “Why are these men gathered in arms?”

“They are my friends,” Richard replied quietly. “The purpose of their assembly is none of your concern.”

Deeping studied him through narrowed eyes before speaking again. “Where is Mauley? Will you hand him over?”

“Let me see the writ,” Richard replied.

Deeping produced the writ and held it up. “The King’s seal,” he said solemnly.

Richard snatched the square of parchment from Deeping’s hand. “Mauley!” he shouted.

A group of archers, including Mauley, appeared on the parapet above his head. At a word from him, they notched arrows to their bows and took aim at Deeping.

“Now you are covered by enough shafts to send you to your graves three times over,” Richard said pleasantly, delighted by the look of cold, trembling fury on Deeping’s face. “But before I decide your fate, let me respond to this summons.”

He dropped the writ into the mud and, encouraged by cheers and laughter from the men on the parapet, hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat on it.

“Now, Master Deeping,” he said with a grin, “you will eat the writ, seal and all. Get off your horse.”

Deeping looked to be on the verge of a seizure. “Traitor,” he said in a strangled voice. “Your brigands may shoot me down, but I will die before I allow you to humiliate me.”

“Traitor, is it?” Richard snarled, his good humour vanished. “You are far too free with that word, though there are traitors in this county. Their day of judgment has come. You shall be both instrument and witness to their punishment.”

In spite of Deeping’s brave words, he and his men were obliged to dismount, or else be shot down. Mauley and his archers stripped them of armour and clothing until they stood shivering in their drawers. Richard decided against forcing the envoy to eat his writ.

“It must be sixty square inches,” he laughed, grinding the parchment with his heel. “The seal by itself would prove an indigestible morsel. We can’t have the Sheriff’s envoy collapsing with belly cramps before we reach Lichfield.”

“Lichfield?” Deeping cried as his hands were roughly seized and bound behind him. “What do you mean?”

Richard chuckled and wagged his head, offering no explanation, but ordered the envoy and his men to be placed at the head of the procession that now set out for the town, some six miles to the south-east. The white hawk banner was brought out of the gate and, with pennons flying and trumpets blowing, Richard and his little army rode at a sedate pace along the King’s road to Lichfield.

The peasants labouring in the fields along the route stopped and gaped at the outlandish spectacle. Some laughed at the cluster of semi-naked men stumbling along in front, while others were inspired to abandon their back-breaking toil and swell the numbers of Richard’s host. These marched in shambolic order behind the horsemen, cheering and waving scythes, reaping hooks and pitchforks.

“We are Robyn Hode’s men!”
they sang
. “War, war, war!”

Richard turned to Henry as Lichfield Cathedral came in sight. “Take the prisoners, as agreed,” he ordered, “and put Deeping in the stocks in the town square. Let the men loose on wine-shops and taverns and do as they will. I am for Malvern Hall.”

Henry nodded obediently. Richard took thirty men and galloped away west, leaving his brother-in-law with the task of distracting the Sheriff by raising hell in Lichfield.

Malvern Hall lay four miles to the west, surrounded by parkland and forest. Unlike Heydon Court, the hall had stood since the Conquest, and proclaimed age and dignity in the weathered grey stone of its walls, its tall tower built in a square style at least two centuries out of fashion, and the sprawling layout of the grounds. Here, the hall declared to ambitious upstarts like the Boltons, is a pride and permanence worked in undressed stone that you, for all your new money and red-brick pretensions, can never hope to achieve.

Richard’s father had hated the place, almost as much as he had resented and envied its owner. Richard reined in as he crested the ridge overlooking the hall. He savoured the sight of his enemy’s home spread out below, blissfully unaware of the storm about to descend on it.

“Smash, burn, pillage and destroy,” he ordered, twisting in the saddle to address his men, “and hunt out Sir Thomas and his kin. Twenty shillings and a silver ewer to the man who brings me Sir Thomas, dead or alive.”

He raised his sword, and with cries of
“A White Hawk! A White Hawk! On them, on them, a Bolton, a Bolton!”
the riders swept down the hill.

Malvern Hall was more a palatial residence than a fortress, and the outer walls had long since been allowed to fall into decay by the arrogance and neglect of their owners. Richard led his followers at the gallop through a great rent in one wall and into the grounds. The hall itself was to the north, flanked by a kitchen wing and private apartments, while the rest of the enclosure was a mess of outbuildings including a dovecote shaped like a giant beehive, a barn, stables and a forge.

Servants wearing Malvern livery scattered and fled for cover. A few were brave or foolish enough to stand their ground, and Richard shouted for joy as he rode down a stout, red-faced man wielding a rake. His followers scattered and charged about the grounds, spearing and cutting down the fleeing servants, men and women, while others dismounted to smash in the doors and windows of the hall.

Four men carrying swords and bucklers tumbled from the door of one of the outbuildings, shouting “A Malvern! A Malvern!” They pulled one man from the saddle and hacked at him as he lay helpless on the ground. Richard’s riders turned on the swordsmen and made short work of them, spearing and riding them down.

The ground-floor windows of the hall had once been arrow-slits, back in the distant days when Sir Thomas’s Norman ancestors had valued security over comfort, but Sir Thomas had widened them and put costly tinted glass in the frames. That now proved to be a wasted investment, as Richard’s men gleefully smashed the glass with the butts of their lances. One of them staggered back with a crossbow bolt protruding from his thigh, but his mates clambered over the sill, eager as bloodied mastiffs.

Richard dismounted, cursing at the brief burst of pain from the scar in his back. He climbed gingerly through the wrecked window, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass.

Inside was a large, spacious chamber with a handsome fireplace decorated with the Malvern arms, tapestries woven in silk hung about the whitewashed walls, and comfortable furniture.

Two of Richard’s men were holding a screaming man in Malvern livery down on the bare stone floor, while a third knelt on his chest and stabbed his eyes with a poniard. They ignored Richard as he stumbled over a fallen crossbow and hurried out into the hallway. There he encountered an old man in a grubby black gown crouched by the wall, his rheumy eyes wide with terror. At the sight of Richard the man fell on his face.

“Mercy, sweet lord,” he whined, weeping into his beard as he clutched at Richard’s legs. The heavy door behind him rattled and shook under the blows of the men outside. Richard spied a bundle of heavy iron keys hanging from his belt.

“Give me those,” he snarled. The greybeard hastened to obey, his arthritic fingers trembling as he fumbled to get the key-ring off his belt. Richard snatched the keys and pushed him aside.

“Wait a moment, lads,” he shouted, trying one key after another in the lock until he found the right one. He lifted the heavy bar and the door swung inward to admit four men, led by a savage knight of Chester named Sir Ralph Basset.

The next half-hour witnessed the shame and destruction of Malvern Hall. Richard’s followers broke tables and benches into little pieces, beat and robbed Malvern’s terrified servants, and ransacked every room. They forced open chests and destroyed the court-rolls, deeds and other valuable documents they found inside– some relating to lawsuits against the Boltons. The intruders then found pieces of tapestry hanging in the hall; these bore the Malvern arms and so were torn down and hacked into quarters.

“The Malverns are traitors,” declared Basset, “so let their arms be quartered, as befits traitors.”

A kind of madness was let loose. Six men broke into the bedchambers and raped the serving-maids they found hiding there before slashing the furnishings with swords and daggers. They destroyed three feather beds and two of worsted, scattering the sheets, coverings and blankets over the floor. They broke into the wine-cellar and liberated pipes of red wine and barrels of ale and wine. Men were soon staggering drunkenly about the corridors, their bodies draped with blood-stained sheets, laughing and singing with the joy of unbridled robbery and violence.