Sacrifice (5 page)

   “Run away, girl,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “run away, and don’t look back.”

   She gathered up her torn clothes and fled into the nearby woods. The pain in her crotch was almost unbearable, but she didn’t stop running. Briars and thorns snagged her naked body, opening fresh cuts on her tender young flesh. Her feet bled as they stumbled over rough ground, loose stones and patches of nettles.

    At last, when the breath grated in her lungs and she could run no more, Maud stopped beside a little stream. There she washed herself, sobbing in shame and terror and at the agony of cold water on open wounds.

   How she survived the next few days was little short of a miracle. Maud gently ran her thumb along the edge of her dagger as she remembered the cold and the privation, sleeping out in the wild with hunger gnawing at her guts and wolves howling in the distance.

   She ate some berries, and chose the wrong kind. The pain in her belly was worse than that inflicted by the soldiers. Far worse. When she had finished vomiting, she wandered aimlessly in a daze, and by the grace of God found a road.

   One way or another, begging and stealing what she needed, Maud survived. She was drawn west, towards the capital, a natural home for strays and refugees like her, thrown up by the violent tides of war.

   Maud soon found her place in Southwark, a cesspool south of the Thames, into which the city poured its human refuse. There was a market for every kind of vice in Southwark, including child prostitutes.

The sound of distant trumpets summoned her back to the present. She slammed her dagger back into the sheath and tucked it into her belt.

It was time to go and see the king.

Chapter 5

The Tower, 13
th
June 1483

Sir Geoffrey Malvern could seldom recall being so nervous. Not even in the aftermath of the Yorkist defeat at Edgecote, fourteen years gone, when he had fled the field and hid in some nearby woods, half-dead with terror.

   A natural coward, Geoffrey had learned to use fear to his advantage. It sharpened his wits, and honed his already extremely well-developed instinct for survival.

  
Be calm
, he told himself,
this is no battlefield, but a council chamber.

  
He was seated at a long table inside an upper-storey chamber in the White Tower. Eight other men sat at the table. Like Geoffrey, most were friends and supporters of the Duke of Gloucester.

   Unlike him, none of the others were privy to Gloucester’s intentions. Geoffrey was a trusted adherent of the House of York, proven in battle (or so his peers thought), and in recent years had risen high in the duke’s service and estimation.

   He had been at York when the news of Edward IV’s premature death arrived, and travelled south in the duke’s retinue. At Northampton and Stony Stratford he witnessed, though played no part in, the arrests of Rivers, Vaughan and Grey. Geoffrey had hoped to escort the prisoners to Pontefract – well away from the crucible of London – but Gloucester chose a lesser knight for the role.

   “I could not afford to send you north,” Gloucester told him, “I need you at my side in London, where true friends are in short supply.”

   Now he found himself on the council, appointed to discuss arrangements for Edward V’s coronation at the end of June. The young king was originally supposed to have been crowned in May, but had arrived in London too late.

   Geoffrey clenched his fists to stop them trembling. It was a hot summer’s morning, and the air in the chamber was close and stuffy. At least the heat helped to explain the perspiration on his brow.

   “You look ill, Sir Geoffrey,” remarked Bishop Morton, seated to Geoffrey’s left, “or perhaps you suffer from an excess of last night’s wine?”

   Geoffrey returned the bishop’s gentle smile with a forced chuckle. Morton was in his sixties, a compact, square-faced man with a thinning grey tonsure and an agile mind. Intelligent, learned and ambitious, he missed nothing, and would soon detect any anxiety.

   It was vital he didn’t. Fortunately, Geoffrey was an accomplished play-actor. “It’s the heat,” he replied with one of his lazy smiles, “I have spent too long in the north. The cold air up there suits me.”

   Morton didn’t press the issue, and for a while they sat and talked of light matters. The bishop was clearly distracted, and conversation elsewhere at the table was stilted. All were waiting for the arrival of the Protector.

   Presently there came the sound of footsteps, and the heavy timbered door swung open. Two burly halberdiers wearing Gloucester’s livery marched in, followed by the slight, compact figure of their master.

   Gloucester was dressed all in black, and looked thin and pale, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

   “Apologies, my lords,” he said, stifling a yawn, “I was up until past two of the clock last night, and late in rising.”

   There was a murmur of greeting from the table. Lord Stanley, Geoffrey noticed, said nothing. Nor did the aged Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York.

   Geoffrey swallowed hard, wiped the perspiration from his brow, and glanced at the second door to the chamber. This one led to a small, disused room, and was usually kept locked. It wasn’t locked today.

   Despite his weariness, Gloucester was in good spirits, and seemed reluctant for the meeting to start in earnest.

   “Let us have some more wine, in Heaven’s name,” he cried, signalling to a page, “if we must discuss dry matters, let us not do it with dry throats.”

   His eye fell on Morton. “Your Grace, I have heard good things of the fruit you grow in your gardens at Holborn. Might we have a basket of strawberries to go with the wine?”

   Morton looked surprised, but it was a harmless enough request. “I will find a servant to fetch them, my lord,” he replied, rising stiffly from his chair.

   Gloucester smiled, and clapped the bishop on the shoulder as he went.

   “Well, then,” said the duke, “I see no reason to begin until the victuals arrive. Pray spare me a little while longer, my lords.”

   He turned and hurried out, leaving anger and confusion behind him.

   “What in God’s name is he about?” demanded Stanley, “I thought the duke was a man of business. Here we sit, with the city in ferment and cries of treason ringing through the streets, and he treats the affair like a holiday.”

   Rotherham murmured in agreement, but others cried no, the duke had everything firmly under control.

   Geoffrey knew that for a lie. London trembled on the verge of a precipice. Richard’s assumption of the Protectorship provided an illusion of power and stability, but no more.

   As soon as word had reached the capital of the arrest of Rivers, the Woodvilles panicked and fled. The bravest of them, Sir Edward Woodville, prowled the Channel with a hired fleet, like a common pirate. Sir Thomas Grey, the Queen’s eldest son by her first marriage and Marquess of Dorset, had gone to ground, and was being hunted through the countryside by soldiers with dogs.

   The Queen herself had fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, taking her daughters and younger son, Richard, Duke of York. Armed gangs stalked the streets, some of them claiming to be for Gloucester, others for Queen Elizabeth. Most were neither, mere criminals taking advantage of the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty to indulge in a little wanton violence.

   Geoffrey shuddered. The tension in the capital was almost palpable. At least the king was safe, lodged in the Tower and surrounded by the Protector’s servants and guards.

   After Gloucester, the most important man in London was William Hastings, the Lord Chamberlain. Geoffrey found it difficult to gauge Hasting’s mood. Now in his fifties, stout and balding, the old Yorkist mainstay said little, but listened to the others talk and argue with an inscrutable expression on his blunt, jowly features.

   It was Hastings who sent letters to Richard at York after the old king’s death, warning him of the Woodville plot to seize power. It was Hastings who persuaded the council, in the first shock of the news of Rivers’ arrest, that Richard’s actions were justified. Hastings was Richard’s friend.

   Geoffrey glanced at the second door again. He was still sweating, and badly needed to piss, but his instructions were to remain seated.

  
Strawberries! The duke made no mention of Morton’s damned strawberries. It is too much. He is taking too long. We shall be discovered. God help me, I am like to wet myself.

  
Incredibly, Gloucester kept them waiting for another hour. Morton returned in that time, along with a servant carrying the requested basket of strawberries.

   The servant passed them out among the councillors. Geoffrey had no appetite, but was obliged to play his part, and managed to choke one down. 

   At last the trial of his nerve and bladder control ended. Gloucester strode back into the chamber, again preceded by his halberdiers. Six more armed retainers were at his back, and spread out to stand either side of him.

   The duke’s cheerful manner had evaporated. His sallow features were contorted with fury, and his entire frame shook, like a man in the grip of a high fever. Spittle bubbled at the corners of his mouth as he roared in wordless rage and pounded his fist on the table, overturning the basket and spilling the remaining strawberries onto the floor.

   “Tell me, my lords,” he screamed, “what should they have, those who wish for and plot my destruction – I, who am close in blood to the king, the Protector of his royal person and realm?”

   The councillors gaped at him, and at each other, but none made any reply. Lord Stanley started to speak, but thought better of it.

   Only Geoffrey knew that Gloucester was play-acting. The duke was an angry man, true enough, and believed himself the target of a conspiracy. However, this show of rage was just that: a show, with lines and movements rehearsed beforehand.

   Lord Hastings cleared his throat. “Truly, my lord,” he ventured, “they should be punished as traitors, whoever they are.”

   Gloucester’s stare could have melted stone. “You say as much,” he hissed, “you, who are so sunk in these same treasons? Who have conspired with the Queen to unseat me, and have me done to death? Do you deny it?”

   Hastings looked utterly astonished, as well he might. His eyes bulged, and his lips worked soundlessly, groping for a reply. “M…my lord,” he croaked, “I…but…”

   “Will you trade ifs and buts with me, you accursed villain? I know, my lord. I know of your secret meetings with Lord Stanley, and Morton, and Rotherham, and how you used that whore Mistress Shore to carry your treasonable messages. I know all of it. Do you understand? All!”

   The word ‘all’ was the signal. Geoffrey scraped back his chair, and a moment later the second door flew open.

Armed men flooded into the room, led by Thomas Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and two of Gloucester’s trusted northerners, Charles Pilkington and Robert Harrington. They had hidden away before the councillors arrived, waiting for their master’s summons.

   “Treason!” they shouted, “treason!”

   Rotherham tried to stand, to protest, but Howard placed a heavy hand on his shoulder and forced him back down. Stanley head-butted the first soldier who tried to seize his arm, and threw himself at two more. During the brief scuffle that followed, he suffered a cut to the cheek and was hurled to the floor. Pilkington knelt on the bellowing nobleman’s back and pressed his face against the cold stone of the floor.

   Geoffrey drew his dagger and held it against Morton’s neck. There was little need. The bishop sat still as a statue, hands folded on his lap, apparently unperturbed. His hard little grey eyes betrayed no sign of fear.

   They glanced down to the blade at his throat. “Either use that thing on me, or take it away,” he murmured. Embarrassed, Geoffrey lowered his weapon.

   A strange calm fell over the chamber. Howard held Rotherham, Pilkington held Stanley, no-one had laid hands on Hastings, and all eyes turned to the diminutive figure in black at the head of the table.  

   Gloucester folded his arms. “Now,” he said, “will you confess your crimes, traitor, before you are shriven and taken out to die? By Saint Paul, I will not sit down to dinner until your head is off!”

   Harrington and three of his men had taken up position behind Hastings’ chair. They stood with their hands on their swords, ready to spring if he tried to escape.

   He didn’t move. Like Morton, he had remained perfectly still during the brief scuffle.

  
His time has come,
thought Geoffrey,
and he knows it.

  
“I will say this, my lord,” Hastings replied calmly, “upon my honour as a knight, I have committed no treason. It is true, I have sometimes visited the houses of these other men, or invited them to mine. We spoke of our concerns. Your name was often mentioned. But we never spoke treason. Discontent, perhaps, but never treason. As for Mistress Shore, I have never used her as a messenger. I beg you, let her be. She is entirely innocent.”

   His words had the uncomfortable ring of truth. Geoffrey was privy to some of Gloucester’s secrets, and knew the duke had employed spies in London to watch the movements of Hastings and the others who stood accused. They brought back vague reports of clandestine meetings at night, but nothing of what was actually said.