Sacrifice (27 page)

Still the Irish came on, careless of wounds, careless of casualties, leaping and climbing over their own dead and wounded. Martin could scarcely believe the depth of their fury, their hatred, the insane battle-rage that drove them onto the royalist blades. 

“Madness!” he cried inside the depths of his helm, “run away, you poor fools, back to your own land! Why fight and die like this in an evil cause?

None heard him, or would have understood if they did. Martin gritted his teeth as he slew, one after another, these hopelessly brave peasants who didn’t know how to fight properly. It was sheer butcher’s work, as though he cut the throats of dumb beasts in a slaughterhouse.

Still, the sheer weight of bodies started to tell. Slowly, slowly the royalist line bent backwards, unable to stand its ground against such a frenzied onslaught. The men in the front rank, including Martin, were so cramped and hard-pressed they had little space to ply their weapons.

A knight to his left was pulled down and vanished under a heap of kerns, howling like wolves as they clawed and tore at the man’s armour. Then his own vision went black as dirty fingers groped inside the narrow slit of his visor and tried to gouge out his eyes. Martin staggered backwards and truck out blindly with the shaft of his axe.

The steel knuckles of his gauntlet met with soft flesh and brittle bone. A cry of pain ripped through his helm, and then he could see again.

He was alone, save for the mangled bodies of a handful of kerns scattered about the grass. Baffled, he tried to peer through the red mist that drifted across the field, and heard the ominous beat of a drum.

Vague, steel-clad figures appeared through the mist. Martin flicked up his visor to get a better view. His throat tightened when he recognised them for Swiss pikemen.

They advanced at the steady, unhurried tread he had witnessed on so many battlefields. Six ranks deep, a moving forest of deadly steel points.

“Retire!” Martin heard Oxford croak, “withdraw ten paces and re-form!”

Martin tore his gaze away from the Swiss and looked around. The kerns had vanished, save for the bodies of their dead and wounded strewn about the ground, though he could hear the sound of fighting in the distance. Their insane charge had served to tear holes in the royalist battle-line, which now shuffled backwards in the face of the new threat.

A fresh storm of war-cries echoed across the field. English voices, raised in shameless treason:

“God for King Edward! God and Saint George for the House of York!”

These were the Lancashire men who had joined Lincoln’s army as it marched across English soil. Martin flushed with rage when he heard them, traitors to a man, who had helped to shatter England’s peace and plunge the wounded kingdom into yet another war.

They would die, every one, either on the field or the block. For a moment Martin forgot his discipline, and failed to withdraw with his comrades. Without meaning to, he stood alone against the advancing wall of levelled Swiss pikes, one man against two thousand.

“Bolton, you dolt! Get back in line!”

Oxford’s voice, a shrill cry of outrage. Martin hesitated, knowing that to turn his back on the pikes was fatal, and chose to stand his ground.

“Come, lads,” he shouted, raising his axe, “I’ve had my fill of running. Here I am. This is my soil. My country. Slay me if you can.”

He could have laughed as the front ranks of the Swiss broke into a jog. They alone, of all the mercenaries in Europe, could execute such a manoeuvre, and run forward without losing their tight shoulder-to-shoulder formation.

Martin had misjudged the distance between himself and the front rank of pikes. There was no time to lift his axe before a pike-head stabbed against his helm, dented the steel and hurled him onto his back.

Stunned, he lay helpless with the taste of blood in his mouth. Purple stars flashed before his eyes. Swiss curses rained down on his head. He gritted his teeth and waited for the death-blow.

It didn’t come. The Swiss stepped over his body as the wall of pikes pressed on to crash into the royalist line. Martin curled into a ball and pressed his gauntlets over his visor. The eye-slit was his most vulnerable point. The blade of a dagger or a poniard, thrust through the narrow gap, would finish him off. 

For a time all was dust and noise and heat and darkness. Martin fully expected to die, trampled or stabbed where he lay.

The long moment of danger passed, the voices receded a little, and he felt safe to try and stand. He groped blindly for his axe, snatched up the weapon and struggled to his feet. The blood and dirt in his mouth threatened to choke him, so he spat it out and blinked, trying to will away the stars that still wheeled in front of his eyes.

An ugly shadow sprang at him. Martin struck out, double-handed. The blade of his axe rang against a helm, and the shadow fell away. He lurched forward, stamped on a breastplate, and swung again. This time his axe sheared through the visor of the man he had struck down. A gout of blood spurted against his leg-armour, and the body he stood on writhed violently, twitched, and went still.

Martin fought like a man caught in a dream, striking any that came near, knights and men-at-arms and archers. He suffered many wounds, and his own warm blood splattered the earth, mingled with that of the men he killed.

He tired. His breath came in gasps, his limbs weighed like lead, and each stroke was heavier and clumsier than the last. Light-headed with pain and loss of blood, Martin could feel the strength ebb from tired, over-stretched muscles.

One more fight, and I am done. One more blow. One more stroke. One more kill, until there are none left to kill. Until I come into my own again. Until England is purged of treason and traitors. Until my kin are avenged. Until...

He could see little through his damaged visor. A film of sweat, coupled with the aftershock of the blow to his head, blurred his vision into a mass of black and red shapes. The battlefield was draped in a curtain of blood, through which men fought like devils, all their ranks broken, all order and leadership swept away.

Some lines from an old Marcher ballad surfaced through the chaos and pain in Martin’s head:
              “Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew said,

I am a little hurt, but not yet slain,

Let me lie down and bleed awhile,

And then rise and fight again....”

Like the knight in the ballad, Martin longed to lie down. It would be easy, so very easy, to sink to the earth and let his tortured life pump back into the soil from whence it came.

Duty kept him on his feet. If he died, what then of his sister Elizabeth? She would be left penniless and landless, with none to protect her, dependent on the charity of the Tudor court.

Martin smiled grimly. Elizabeth needed little protection. Whatever happened, she would survive, and make some kind of life for herself. Martin’s duty was not to her, but the rest of his kin. Victims, all of them, of a war they had not started and could not avoid.

The crackle of gunfire burst through his mazed thoughts. Schwartz’s arquebusiers had opened fire. Martin pictured the lead bullets tear fresh holes in the ragged lines of Oxford’s vanguard, punch through steel with ease, fill the world with the stench and terror of black powder.

Martin swayed on his feet. He had dropped his axe, and stood alone and vulnerable, all the fight knocked out of him. He could kill no more. Only stand, so long as his strength lasted, and wait for the end.

Some time later - it might have been noon, or even dusk, he was never certain - they found him lying propped against a tree on the northern edge of the battlefield, near the road called the Fosse Way.

Martin only had a dim memory of how he came to be there. He thought he had crawled on all fours, like a beast, careless of where he went, so long as he left the noise and clamour and bloodshed behind him.

“Bolton.”

A vaguely familiar voice. Martin stirred, and made a supreme effort to lift his head.

“Bolton. I saw you move, Bolton. Stop playing the old soldier. You’re alive.”

The voice merged with the shimmering edges of the man-shape that stood over him. Sir John Savage. A brave knight, Martin vaguely recalled. A lucky one, to be sure. Savage’s armour was plastered with blood, none of it his own.

“Am I?” Martin said blearily, “God be thanked. Or cursed. Heaven knows He will listen to neither.”

“That is impious,” said another man, “we should all give thanks to God. He has given us the victory. A great and lasting victory.”

This was the Earl of Pembroke’s voice, deep and stern, still tinged with a Welsh accent despite long years of exile in Brittany.

“Victory,” said Martin. He rolled the word around his mouth. It tasted foul. His brother Richard had tasted victory at Wakefield and Saint Albans. Small good they did him.

“There are no lasting victories,” he added, “only brief bursts of good fortune. The wheel shall turn again. One day we reach the apex of glory, the next we are flung into a pit of snakes.”

Savage reached down to grasp Martin’s hand, and drag him to his feet. “Not this time,” rumbled Pembroke, “Lincoln is dead. Schwartz is dead. Simnel and the priest are taken captive. Their army is smashed beyond hope of recovery. A few of their lesser captains have fled, true, but they will find no refuge in England. The House of York is ruined, and shall never again rise in arms to plague our realm.”

With Savage’s aid, Martin managed to wrench off his battered helm. He looked around, blinking, at the field of slaughter.

The dead lay in great heaps, at their thickest near the gully at the foot of the escarpment. Martin saw the broken bodies of hundreds of Swiss and German mercenaries. They had died where they stood, formed up around the banners of their captains, overwhelmed at the last.

“Matters looked grim for a while,” said Savage, “until our reinforcements arrived and hit the Yorkists in flank. They fought well, mind, and refused to break until all their host was in tatters. Schwartz was among the last to die. God knows how many wounds the German swine took before he finally dropped.”

Martin continued to stare dumbly at the carnage. Martin Schwartz was dead, the great captain-general, yet Martin Bolton lived. The lion lay in his own blood, while the wolf flourished.

He drew himself up. “I am no wolf,” he said, “but a hawk. The white hawk.”

This met with a baffled silence, broken by another familiar voice.

“Indeed you are,” said King Henry, “and hawks are noble creatures.”

The Tudor’s voice was dry and secretly amused. Martin wearily turned to confront the tall, spare figure, clad in an ornate suit of armour, painted black and gold with the lions and lilies of England displayed on the surcoat.

Henry was bareheaded. He looked as inscrutable as ever, with little apparent joy in victory. His little blue eyes stared hard and unblinking at Martin, who did his best to hold the gaze.

He may as well have tried to outstare a python. Henry nodded with satisfaction when Martin broke and looked away, and beckoned to his esquires.

“Sword,” he snapped. One of the esquires stepped forward with the king’s sword, gold-hilted and girt in a black leather sheath.

“On your knees, Bolton,” said the king, “you will not refuse my gift this time.”

In his light-headed state, Martin wondered if he dared do it, and set Henry to defiance. After all, his family were in the habit of defying kings.

There were no more battles left in him. With a sigh, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

The royal sword tapped lightly on his shoulders. “Arise,” the words echoed in his ears, as though from a great distance, “Sir Martin Bolton.”

EPILOGUE

Taken from the private journal of Mary Bolton.

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of my father at Blore Heath, slaughtered in battle by men he considered friends and neighbours.

   His killing set off the chain of deaths that ended with the execution of my brother, James. We are just one of many families who suffered. Oceans of blood have washed England’s fair fields in the last thirty years, but no more. The land sits becalmed in an uneasy Tudor dawn, under the rule of a king who brooks no opposition.

   God has granted the last of my kin a kind of peace. King Henry finally restored us to our lost manors, and added the house and lands of Malvern Hall, once in the possession of our enemy, Sir Geoffrey. Martin burned the hall, declaring it an unclean place to live, and left the blackened shell for local peasants to house their cattle.

   Poor Martin. The death of Kate Malvern sits heavy on his soul. Most days he rides out to the hunt, and I see his figure on the edge of the forest, staring at the walls of Whiteladies. His wife, Diana, informs me that he drinks himself to sleep every night. He may not live long.    

   Diana does not love him, I think, but knows her duty. She
has borne him twin boys, strong little creatures who, I pray nightly, will never have to lift a sword in defence of hearth and home. 

   As for myself, I am content to remain at Whiteladies until the end of my days. God, in His infinite mercy, saw fit to restore my daughter to me. She visits often, and we walk in the gardens together. Still, nothing can penetrate the barrier between us. There are details of her past I do not wish to know, and she will never tell.

   Elizabeth has also done her duty by the family. She is married to a wealthy corn-monger of Stafford, a shrewd man of business, only too eager to drop his family name and call himself a Bolton. Her belly is already swollen with a second child. The first, a daughter, plays in the woods and fields around Heydon Court with Martin’s sons. Their laughter does much to appease the sad ghosts of their forebears.

   The present is more than I could have hoped for, and yet war leaves marks that do not fade. My people shall live on. But they are a damaged people, and walk under a poison rain.

-      
Mary Bolton, 23
rd
September 1489.

END

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I chose not to add an author’s note to previous instalments of
The White Hawk,
but thought one was necessary here: mainly due to my depiction of King Richard the Third, possibly the most famous/notorious monarch in English history, especially since the discovery of his remains under a car park in Leicestershire.

Richard’s life and brief career as king have generated more debate than any of his peers. To many he is a maligned hero, a good man whose reputation was deliberately ruined by Tudor propaganda after his betrayal and death at Bosworth. The first Tudor king, Henry VII, deliberately encouraged a black image of Richard, until the world remembered him as a villainous usurper and murderer of his nephews. Shakespeare’s infamous play, in which Richard appears as a hideously deformed psychopath, gleefully mowing down everyone who stands in his way to the throne, completed this negative picture.

So far as his physical deformities go, these were certainly much exaggerated. His skeleton revealed evidence of a twist in his spine, a condition known as scoliois, which might have made his left shoulder appear slightly higher than the other. This could have given rise to the story of him being a hunchback, and it is worth bearing in mind that any physical deformity, no matter how slight, was viewed in the Middle Ages as a sign of inner evil.

I wrote Richard as I saw him: a ruthless medieval aristocrat, raised in a brutal and bloody environment, who acted according to his lights. An able man in many ways, and physically brave, he was forced to act in haste to preserve his own position after King Edward’s death, and committed a series of terrible blunders. The upshot was Bosworth Field, and the unlikely rise to power of the Tudor dynasty.

Ultimately, this is a story about the Boltons, not Richard, and it is time to leave this generation of the family to repair their shattered fortunes as best they can. The short story that follows, The Devil’s Due, acts as a prelude to the next series of tales of The White Hawk.

THE DEVIL’S DUE

By David Pilling

1.

In the late summer of 1642 Henry Malvern met the Devil. Or, to be more precise, he met one of His servants.

It happened thus. Henry lived in the town of Stafford and scraped a poor living as a legal clerk, working for a money-lender named William Audley. Audley was a typical specimen of his breed: cold-hearted, grasping, penny-pinching, and cruel. Some of his notoriety rubbed off onto his clerk, and as a result Henry was not popular in the town.

He was not helped by being so ill-favoured. A childhood bout of rickets had left him with slightly bowed legs and a deformed spine. These disfigurements, combined with his sharp features and long nose, led to him acquiring the nickname of The Weasel.

The Weasel may have had weak legs, but he had good hearing. As he walked about the market place during the short midday break Audley permitted him, he soaked up the local gossip and rumour.