Revenge (2 page)

He wore a sallet and a leather jack, with greaves to protect his thighs, but otherwise his body was unprotected. Any one of the barb-tipped arrows might have condemned him to a terrible death. The wound itself might not put an end to him, but the flesh-rot that followed surely would, for archers were known to stick their arrows in the ground for rapid re-loading. As a result the heads were often smeared with mud, causing incurable infections in the luckless men they hit.

Richard was careless of these dangers as he stormed up the slope, using his poleaxe as a crutch to help him over the corpses of the men who had gone before. One of them was Lord Audley. The nobleman lay still and gleaming in his harness, blood and brains leaking from under the shattered ruin of his helm. Ignoring the arrows flying past his head, Richard stopped and gazed in horror at the mangled dead thing. In his mind’s eye he saw his father laid low by some equally dreadful stroke.

A scream from a familiar voice made him look up. Mere feet away, Alan lay squirming in unspeakable pain, a spear thrust into his unprotected crotch. The spearman bared his blackish teeth in a savage grin as he gave the weapon a savage twist. He forced Alan down and stamped on his face, cutting off his screams.

Richard lifted his poleaxe in both hands and brought it down on the Yorkist as he tried to drag his weapon free of Alan’s body. The broad blade landed between his neck and shoulder, cleaving through his collar-bone and deep into his breast. He fell to his knees, blood spraying from his dreadful wound and splattering over Richard’s jack.

Another Yorkist sprang over the body of his dying comrade, stabbing at Richard’s face with a bill. Richard pulled his weapon free in time and swung it like a club at the Yorkist’s head, swatting him to the ground. A Lancastrian appeared from nowhere and flung himself on the fallen man, stabbing frenziedly at the back of his neck with a knife.

The Yorkists were flooding down the slope now, and the sky was still dark with arrows, littering the ground with more dead and dying. Their infantry were pushing hard, forcing the Lancastrians back down to the edge of the stream. Lord Dudley’s banner had dipped and vanished in the fighting. Richard could barely restrain the urge to turn and run, to save his skin while there was still time.

A hand plucked feebly at his leg. “Please…”Alan moaned through a mouthful of blood. “Help me. Christ Jesus, help me…”

The spear was still stuck in Alan’s groin. His vitals were spilling out, try as he might to hold them in.

“I’m sorry,” said Richard, shaking his head, “I can do nothing for you.”

Men came running towards him, fellow Lancastrians, wild-eyed as they flung away their weapons. They barged past Richard, almost knocking him over in their panic.

Richard’s wavering nerve snapped. He dropped his poleaxe and fled. The cheers of the enemy filled his ears as he ran like a rabbit, back down the blood-soaked hill.

2.

Two miles west of Blore Heath, on the outskirts of the little town of Market Drayton, James Bolton sat on his shaggy grey pony and listened to the sounds of battle.

He took frequent gulps from a wineskin as screams, war-cries, the whinnying of horses and the clatter of steel drifted on the faint wind.

He was not alone. A handsome covered carriage with six horses in the traces was parked nearby, with a strong escort of mounted esquires and men-at-arms. The door of the carriage was open. Three women were visible inside.

One of the women was Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England. James suspected her to be the tall, mean-eyed minx with the long nose and pointed chin. She was dressed entirely in scarlet under her fur-lined gown, and her icily beautiful face was pale with tension. Her long fingers toyed nervously with a set of rosary beads as she listened to the distant sound of fighting.

None minded the drunken chaplain sitting and swaying slightly on his little pony, though one or two of the soldiers had cast envious glances at James’ wineskin. If it were not for the Queen’s presence, they would have tried to take it from him.

“By rights,” James said aloud, not caring who heard, “I should be on the battlefield, fighting for the King with sword and buckler. I was the eldest son, you know. But God spoke to me.”

“Bacchus, was it?” quipped one of the soldiers, to sniggers from his mates, and earning himself a furious shouted rebuke from his captain.

Ignoring the interruption, James belched and wiped the spillage from his greasy ginger beard.

“Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned,” he cried, spreading his arms wide and raising his eyes to Heaven. “I have fathered bastard children on my flock, and pilfered money from the poor-box, and brawled and swilled and fornicated. My punishment is to be thus, weak and helpless to assist my kin as they fight on the side of the righteous.”

He continued in this vein, beseeching Heaven and listing his sins in ever more lurid detail, until the captain of the men-at-arms left his post by the carriage and trotted up to him.

“Here’s a fine-looking man,” James slurred, offering his wineskin. “Broad shoulders, a grim visage, and a beard like a spade. A soldier, by God! There seem to be a lot of them about today.”

“Shut your mouth, you old fool,” hissed the captain, tapping the pommel of his sword meaningfully, “or, priest or no, I will cut your tongue out. Understand?”

“Bloated and foolish I may be, but old?” James cried in mock offence. “I am but five-and-twenty, sir, and a better man than you, or any of those lackwits behind you.”

The captain struck James across the face with the back of his steel-gauntleted fist, and sent the priest reeling out of his saddle.

“
Mea Culpa
,” he mumbled as he lay on his back, holding his bleeding nose. “I didn’t realise I was addressing such a mighty warrior, that strikes defenceless men of God.”

“Just be silent,” the captain said moodily, turning his horse and riding back to the carriage. James looked around for his darling and saw it lying nearby, the precious grape of Gascony leaking from its nozzle. Whimpering at such a terrible waste, he quickly glanced around to check no-one was watching – James retained a sliver of pride – and crawled over to the puddle of wine and started to lick it up.

When that bounty was exhausted, James upended the limp wineskin. There was none left. Not a drop. To compound his misery, there were no taverns or wine-shops open in Market Drayton - the people of the town had either fled, or were hiding behind locked and barred doors, doubtless praying for deliverance. Whoever won the battle, York or Lancaster, the soldiers of the victorious army would soon fall to pillaging local shops and homesteads. No commander on either side would be mad enough to try and prevent them.

James couldn’t blame the townspeople for fleeing or hiding, but he badly needed a drink. He regarded sobriety as an arid plain, and walked it as little as possible.

His pony nosed at him affectionately, but he batted her away. The carriage and its armed escort were still present, and the mean-eyed woman James took to be the Queen of England had aged about twenty years in an hour. The battle was still raging in the east, and she was clearly desperate for news, snapping at the other ladies in the carriage whenever they dared to speak.

“No wine,” James muttered, rubbing his throat. He was parched, like a dried-up river bed in high summer. Sweet Christ, the battle had to end soon, didn’t it? How long could men stand and hammer away at each other, before their limbs drooped with cramp and weariness? He wondered if his father and brother were still alive, and if he should venture closer to the battle to look for them.

That would be the right course, the bravest and most honourable. Why, then, did he remain sitting on the grass, feeling sorry for himself? Was he a coward, too afraid to risk his body?

James couldn’t remember. His true character was long since drowned in drink, and he found it difficult to piece together the memory of it. Merely riding to Market Drayton, to bless the Lancastrian soldiers and wish his father and brother good fortune before they marched off to battle, had been a titanic effort of will. Far easier to slump over a jug of cloudy ale in the Plough inn at Cromford, or visit one of his illicit mistresses scattered about Staffordshire.

The sudden excited roars of some soldiers made his head throb. James shifted his mournful gaze from the empty wineskin and, looking past the shouting carriage guards, spied eight riders approaching, galloping at a tearing pace across the field.

One of the riders carried a huge standard displaying the royal arms of England. The captain of the Queen’s escort spurred forward to meet them, followed by his men.

James struggled to his feet. The wine fumes that clouded his mind and his judgement receded, blown away by a terrible fear. If the royal standard bearer had fled the battle, then the Lancastrians must have lost, which meant his kin were in terrible danger. Or dead.

He staggered towards the milling crowd of horsemen, careless of how ridiculous he looked. “What news?” he cried, waving his arms, his habit flapping about his bare ankles. “In God’s name, what news?”

One of the soldiers glanced down at him in disgust. “None that concerns you, sot,” he said, jabbing at James with the butt of his spear, who caught it and glared fiercely at him.

“None of my concern?” he growled. “My brother and my father, both better men than you, were fighting on the King’s side in the battle. Fighting, while you sat here, picking at the boils on your arse!”

“Leave it, James,” said a familiar voice. James turned around to see the flushed features of Henry of Sedgley, another Staffordshire gentleman and a close neighbour of the Boltons.

Henry was a big, fleshy youth, and an unacknowledged bastard son of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the Queen’s chief allies.  Like the Boltons, he was loyal to the ruling House of Lancaster, and had come to Blore Heath to serve in the Queen’s army.

Judging from his appearance, he had seen a great deal of fighting. His helm was gone, his breastplate scarred and dented, and he was spattered in blood and dirt.

He leaned down, stroking his shuddering, sweat-soaked horse’s neck to calm her. “Our army is fleeing in rout,” he panted, “and the Yorkists will be here soon, to plunder the town. You must get away, quickly.”

James opened his mouth to reply, but was distracted as the ashen-faced captain of the guard galloped past him, back towards the carriage.

The captain vaulted from the saddle and spoke urgently to the Queen, whose creamy face turned an even ghastlier shade of pale. She yelled at her driver, and the captain had to leap back from the step as the door slammed in his face.

The driver roused the horses into life with a shout and a snap of his whip, and the heavy carriage slewed about and rumbled away to the north. The Queen’s escort and the fugitives from the battle galloped in pursuit.

Henry and James remained behind on the heath. “Here,” said Henry, offering his hand to the priest, “jump up behind me. That old pony of yours won’t carry you out of danger fast enough.”

James closed his eyes for a moment. His head was bursting, as it always did when deprived of a steady flow of alcohol.

“You can leave if you wish, but I am going to take shelter there until nightfall,” he said, pointing to a small patch of woodland half a mile south of the town, “when the Yorkists are gone, I will go in search of my kin on the battlefield.”

“You can’t mean it,” said Henry, glancing nervously over his armoured shoulder. The din of battle was getting closer. Trumpet-blasts and throbbing drums mingled with the shouts of men, the neighing of horses and the clatter of harness and weapons.

“I do,” James replied firmly, “my mind is set. I cannot abandon them. God would never forgive me.”

Or my mother
, he thought. The notion of returning home to Heydon Court and informing Dame Anne, the stern matriarch of the Bolton clan, that he had left his father and brother to their fate, was more than enough to pour a little steel into his spine.

Henry’s broad face was a mask of indecision, and he seemed torn between a desire to flee and the preservation of his own interests. “To the woods, then,” he said at last.

They rode to the trees and waited there, crouching in wet undergrowth while dark clouds billowed across the sky. The sound of Yorkist troops plundering Market Drayton carried on long into the night. Predictably, the soldiers broke into the taverns and wine-shops first, and very soon became uncontrollably drunk.

When some hours had passed, and the noise had lessened somewhat, Henry touched James’ arm.

“Time to go,” he mouthed. Moving as quietly as possible, they untethered their horses and stole out from under the trees.

“Stay close to me,” whispered Henry as he mounted his destrier. “I will guard you, if I can.”

James nodded and clambered stiffly aboard his pony. As they set off east towards the battlefield, he heard the shrill cry of a kite circling far overhead.

There will be more of those carrion-eaters hereabouts, he thought, but whose flesh will they be picking at? No flesh of mine. Please God, no flesh of mine.

3.

Heydon Court, Staffordshire

Mary Bolton raced up the steps onto the parapet of the outer wall. The sentry, a one-eyed veteran named Nicholas Mauley, pointed to the sad little party emerging from the misted fields south of the house.