Revenge (14 page)

A man jumped out of each boat, sinking up to their waists in the sea, and turned to the difficult task of persuading their horses to follow. After much effort and cursing, during which both vessels threatened to capsize as the reluctant beasts defied every effort to get them over the side, it was done. The men led their horses through the surf to the beach.

Richard Bolton’s feet crunched on the pebbles as he patted his horse’s shivering neck and watched the boats row in silence back to the cog. The captain, a Frenchman in the Duke of Somerset’s employ, had sailed from Boulogne to this desolate headland, skilfully evading the English ships patrolling the coast.

Mauley was still dragging his horse through the shallows, and let fly a horrible oath as he tripped and fell with a splash.

Not a
good omen,
thought Richard as he helped the other man to his feet.

“Thanks,” Mauley said curtly, wringing out his cloak. Richard said nothing. It still rankled that Mauley no longer bothered to address him by a title, but he lacked the will to insist on such deference. At least there was no doubting the man’s loyalty: few unpaid retainers would have agreed to accompany their master on a dangerous mission into unfamiliar country.

“If you think Staffordshire is lawless and riven by local feuds,” Trollope had warned him, “then think again, because it is a haven of law and order by comparison to where you are going. Murder, piracy, unjust seizure of land and abduction are all commonplace in the south-west. For the past ten years and more the region has been split by a bitter private war. The Earl, our ally, is at odds with Lord Bonville, a traitor who cleaves to York. Several pitched battles have been fought, and many towns and manors pillaged. Between them the opposing factions have made Devonshire a great grave.”

Richard shifted uncomfortably as he recalled Trollope’s words. He touched his belt for reassurance. The letters from Somerset to Edmund Courtenay, Earl of Devon, were neatly folded and tucked away inside the lining. He was under strict orders not to read them.

“You’re just the carrier, Bolton, understand?” Somerset had said, giving him a hard look.

Richard had bowed and murmured in the affirmative. He had no intention of disobeying the Duke. The patronage and favour of such a great man could be the making of him. One day, if all went well, he would be able to go home in triumph.

It was too dark on the beach to consult the map of the coast. Richard tried to recall the details. “Exeter lies ten miles or so to the north-east of here,” he said, “and there’s a port called Budleigh Salterton about a mile to the south. Trollope said that the loyalty of the people tends to fluctuate, depending which faction has the upper hand. Typical wavering peasants.”

Mauley shrugged. “Makes good sense to me,” he said. “Better to waver than have your roof burned over your head.”

And better to die than live without honour
, Richard thought. He let it go. There was nothing to be gained from arguing. Mauley was of peasant stock himself, and couldn’t be expected to understand.

“I think there are only a few scattered villages between here and Exeter,” he said, “so we should be safe enough, provided we ride fast and give them a wide berth.”

Mauley agreed. They set off in the dark, picking their way carefully across the bleak, flat fields beyond the beach. They passed the occasional lonely cotter’s hut and small farmstead, but no lights flickered inside the shuttered windows, and the sound of their hoof beats was swallowed up in the night.

It was not long past midnight, and Richard had hopes of reaching Exeter well before dawn broke. There he hoped to find the Earl of Devon. If not, he faced the unenviable task of trying to discover the Earl’s whereabouts without arousing suspicion.

God chose this moment to desert Richard. They had not ridden four miles before his horse shied and stumbled under him. He lighted down to find that she had turned a shoe.

“Ill-fortune, and at a bad time,” Mauley said, glancing up at the sky. “It’s starting to rain.”

Richard shot Mauley a furious glance. The other man completely ignored it. Rain had indeed started to fall, pattering on their cloaks and forming pools in the mud.

“Give me your horse,” he said. “You can lead this one on foot.”

Mauley did nothing. “Did you hear me?” Richard demanded.

“I heard,” Mauley replied mildly, “but I’ll not obey.”

Richard struggled for speech. Never in his life had he taken such insolence from a servant.

“Damn you, I am your lord!” he shouted, furious beyond measure. He thoughtlessly clapped a hand to his sword.

“I have stayed with you, for your father’s sake,” Mauley said in the same mild, patient tone, “but there it ends. There is no indenture between us now. I am a fellow outlaw, not your servant, and you would be well-advised to let go of that sword. Otherwise I shall ride away and leave you to blunder about in the night.”

Some germ of common sense persuaded Richard to let his hand fall away from his sword. Without another word he turned and tramped away through the downpour, leading his limping horse by the reins.

Another hour passed in miserable silence. The rain got heavier, turning the soft earth into a bog, and Richard was forced to stop and rest at frequent intervals. He was exhausted, sleep-deprived and caked in mud up to his shins, and by his reckoning there were still another five or six miles to go to Exeter. The landscape, what he could see of it, was a barren moor stretching to infinity. His nervous imagination conjured up images of devils and malicious spirits wandering the dark, searching for lost travellers to devour.

Their way was blocked by a deep, dark, tangled wood. Richard didn’t recall it being marked on the maps of the region he had studied in France.

“We’ll have to try and find a way through,” said Mauley, climbing off his horse, “or else spend hours trying to find a way round.”

They cautiously ventured into the crowded trees, leading their horses on foot, the pitch darkness forcing them to grope their way through. Panic rose in Richard as claw-like thorns and brambles whipped and tore at him but he fought it down. He mouthed silent prayers for Christ to guide him safely through this latest trial.

He lost all track of time. In his mind the nightmarish wood stretched on forever, infested with nameless, creeping horrors that thirsted for his blood and soul. A wave of self-pity washed over him. He was wet, cold, weary and terrified, lost in a strange land with only one recalcitrant servant for company.

As if these horrors were not enough, the doleful howl of a wolf echoed through the trees, causing his fluttering heart to skip a beat.

“The beast is a long way off,” muttered Mauley, as though sensing Richard’s need for assurance, but there was a tremor in his voice. He was frightened too.

Richard had never known the old soldier to show fear at anything, and was shocked to realise how much his own courage relied on Mauley’s. The revelation made him angry. He ploughed on with renewed spirit, hacking blindly with his sword at the hateful branches that snagged and tripped him at every opportunity.

Then the light he had been praying for glimmered through the trees directly ahead. Richard cried out for joy and pulled his horse towards it. Mauley followed at a more cautious pace.

The hateful trees parted to reveal not the lamp of the Lord hanging in the sky, but candle-light streaming from the upper-storey window of a house on the edge of the wood. It was a lonely and sinister-looking place, smaller and less grand than Heydon Court, enclosed by a high wall with a timber gate. Empty moorland stretched away beyond the house, though a dense cluster of lights shone like distant stars on the horizon to the north-east.

“Thank God,” breathed Richard, who didn’t give a damn how sinister the house looked. He had passed safely through the valley of darkness, and now he wanted a roof over his head.

“Wait a bit,” said Mauley, laying a hand on Richard’s arm as he started towards the house. “Is this wise? Whoever lives there may not prove friendly.”

Richard shook him off. “I have no intention of spending the rest of the night in the open, catching my death,” he snapped. “We’ll simply tell them that we’re travellers who have lost our way.”

“And why should we be travelling on the moor at this time of night?”

Richard thought a moment. “We are wine merchants from Boulogne, and were on our way to Exeter from Budleigh Salterton,” he said, improvising gamely. “Thieves attacked us on the road and stole our goods. We fled and got lost in the dark. Will that suffice?”

Mauley shrugged his massive shoulders. “I suppose it will have to. Lead on, then.”

Leaving his lame horse in Mauley’s care, Richard approached the gate and hammered on it with the butt of his sword. “Open up, in God’s name!” he shouted. “If you are Christians, open up!”

A light appeared in the little window above the gate. “Who the hell are you?” cried a man’s voice, sleepy and irritable. “What are you doing on the moor at this hour?”

Richard looked up, straining to make out the man’s face, silhouetted by the light of a torch. He repeated the story he had just invented, and after some argument the gatekeeper agreed to go and inform his master.

“Fortunately for you, he is in the habit of staying up late at nights,” he said. The light receded, and Richard and Mauley were left to wait in the dark and wet.

After a short time they heard men’s voices within, and the bar of the gates being lifted. The gates swung inward. Four armed men stood in the passage. Two held torches that illuminated their gaunt, unshaven faces, eyes full of suspicion and malice. The others held loaded crossbows, and levelled them at Richard’s chest.

“I’m here in peace,” he said, taking a step back and holding up his hands. The crossbowmen continued to glower at him, but then a fifth man, a much shorter and slighter figure, pushed between them.

Richard made out a lean, dapper little man dressed in a dark blue dressing-gown, with a mop of grey curls partially concealed by a linen night-cap. His face was like a child’s, smooth and oval, with a pair of large, heavy-lidded eyes that blinked like an owl’s as they absorbed the strangers at his door.

“I am Edward Curtis,” he said in clipped, high-pitched tones, “and this is my house. My gatekeeper informs me that you were attacked on the road by thieves.”

“Just so, sir,” replied Richard, bowing and discovering hitherto-unknown acting skills as he spoke with humility and respect. “All our goods were taken, and we narrowly escaped with our lives. We were pursued some miles and obliged to hide in the woods, where my horse turned a shoe.”

Curtis peered closely at Mauley. “A wine merchant with a missing eye,” he said with a knowing smile, “and a face that looks as a though a body of horse galloped over it. This one is a soldier, I think.”

“Was,” Richard replied, clinging stoutly to the lies he had invented. “He saw hard service in France and other places. Now I employ him as my bodyguard. Will you give us sanctuary for the night, sir? We can pay for bed and board.”

The little man considered a moment, tapping his fingertips together. “Very well,” he said, “though my house is a small one, and I have only rough lodgings to offer. You will have to bed down in the stables.”

“That is no hardship,” said Richard. “Better rough comfort than none at all.”

The little man nodded. “Then welcome to Woodbury Hall,” he said, still wearing his enigmatic little smile, and signalled at his men to escort Richard and Mauley inside.

The courtyard was small, and much of the space taken up by a jumble of outbuildings. The house itself at the northern end of the enclosure was an ugly, old-fashioned place with thick walls and few windows, though the upper storey was half-timbered and the roof had been laid with new tiles.

“Those men are going to watch us all night,” remarked Mauley as they rubbed down their horses in the stables. Richard, who was kneeling to check on his horse’s injured leg, looked up and saw the crossbowmen standing guard outside the half-open door.

“I don’t blame them,” he said. “We could be anyone. I am content to be watched, so long as they don’t try and rob us or slit our throats in the night. Master Curtis seems an honourable man.”

“He looked like a weasel to me. A lawyer or some such. Don’t make the mistake of trusting him.”

“I am a better judge of a gentleman than you, Mauley,” Richard snapped, “and I haven’t forgotten what you said to me on the moor.”

“I meant every word,” said Mauley, turning his back and ambling towards the heap of dry, musty straw at the far end of the stable, “even though you just appointed me as your bodyguard, a job I don’t recall applying for. Pray that I don’t insist on wages.”

Richard glared at him murderously, but said nothing more, and went back to attending his horse. What he found made him curse his ill-luck. She had not only turned a shoe, but badly twisted her right foreleg, and would be in no condition to ride for weeks.

He spent an uncomfortable and virtually sleepless night lying on flea-infested straw, still afflicted by nameless fears. Mauley lay dead to the world, snoring with his mouth open. Not once did the men outside relax their vigil.

The coming of dawn was a blessed relief. Richard was up at first light, yawning and stretching his weary muscles. He badly needed a piss, but when he trudged to the door his way was barred by one of the guards, a big, heavy-jawed man wearing a sallet and a rusted mail shirt. He carried a bill-hook, and held the staff across the door as Richard approached.