The King's Dogge (5 page)

Suddenly, I spotted the Earl of Warwick in the throng. He moved slowly accompanied by only two knights. I forced my way through the mass of fleeing solders to get to him. With him I would be safe.

‘My lord, your brother sent me. The battle is lost and he bids you to flee.'

The earl's face was flushed and his breath came in quick gasps. He nodded at me and raised his voice to the knights.

‘Bring the horses here!' he ordered.

They hurried away obediently.

I offered him my flask of wine and he snatched at it eagerly. Even as he gulped at the drink, the roar of battle grew ever louder and there was a sudden shout.

Gloucester must have launched his flank attack, I thought miserably. By now my lord would be under attack from two sides.

‘Where are the horses?' the earl panted.

I looked round desperately, while the numbers of men hurrying past us was increasing, I could see no sign of Warwick's knights returning.

‘They will be here presently, my lord.'

We waited anxiously as the noise behind us grew louder still, and more and more men slipped past us.

‘Where are they?' demanded the earl furiously.

Despite all my fear, my heart went out to him. It was obvious by now that his knights had decided to save themselves and not their lord. The great Earl of Warwick, who had ruled the North as a king and who had nurtured thousands of his retainers, had been abandoned by them all. It was not right to leave my lord like that.

I gestured in the direction of the camp.

‘We will find horses there, my lord.'

We started to move slowly towards the wood. The earl's panting was growing ever louder, and his face was turning increasingly red. He stumbled a couple of times, and his eyes met mine in mute entreaty. I offered him my shoulder to steady himself.

There was a great shout from behind us and I heard the cry ‘Montague's down!' An instant later, the trickle of men racing past us became a torrent. We were jostled and my lord was flung to the ground. I shielded him as best I could until the crowd had passed, but it took all my strength to get him up.

He swayed unsteadily, his breathing ragged.

‘The camp is only a little further,' I said encouragingly.

He glanced at me dully and the weight on my shoulder became heavier as we staggered on.

We came to a clearing and, just as I was daring to think we would make it to the camp, my lord fell heavily. I laid my poleaxe on the ground and bent over him. He lay with his eyes closed, his rasping breath coming very slowly.

The sudden crack of a snapping branch behind me made me spin round. A few yards away, six or seven men were advancing stealthily towards us. For a moment, I imagined that they were the earl's men come back to help him, but to my horror I saw them draw their swords and spread out in a crude semi-circle facing us.

They were Yorkists.

The rasping noise from behind me told me that the earl still lived, so I slowly bent down to pick up my poleaxe and then closed my visor. Stepping forward a pace, I swung at the nearest man and did not wait to watch him fall. I jabbed quickly at another, but I was too slow. The others must have rushed me, as there was now a terrible pain in my left leg and then something hit my head and everything went dark.

I must have drifted in and out of consciousness; at one point I believed that a group of men came and peered at us, but eventually my head began to clear, although I found it difficult to see properly. As my vision improved, so my concern for the earl increased and, ignoring the pain in my leg, I raised myself up on one elbow to attend to him. But then I retched uncontrollably. The Earl of Warwick's face had been sliced open and his blue eyes gazed sightlessly at me. Looking down, I saw that much of his armour had been ripped off and even his gauntlets had been taken. I peered at his hands and vomited. The thieves had hacked off his swollen fingers to steal his jewelled rings – his hands now ended in bloody stumps. I wiped my mouth and thought back bitterly to what the two messengers had said about looting. What an easy target the earl must have seemed to his murderers. I cursed them and brooded darkly on the evil that could cause men to do such a thing.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of horses. I propped myself up to watch the knights dismount. Judging by their magnificent armour, I guessed that these were nobly born Yorkists. The approaching men must have noticed my movements, as two of them advanced on me with swords outstretched and stood threateningly over me.

‘The earl, Your Grace.'

There were murmurs of consternation from the knights when they saw what the thieves had done.

‘Anthony – care for him and Montague. Have them cleaned up. I want them displayed in St Paul's so all men know they are dead.'

‘Yes, Your Grace.'

In response to some unseen gesture, the two guards removed their swords and the group clustered around me.

‘Get up!' an immensely tall man commanded me.

‘I can't.'

The giant gazed down at me.

‘Who are you?'

‘Lovell, squire to Lord Montague.'

A metalled foot booted me in the ribs.

‘You say, Your Grace.'

‘Leave him, Anthony,' the tall man said.

He glanced down at me curiously, lying next to the dead earl. Then he narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

‘If you were Montague's squire, why did you leave him?'

So I told His Grace – for this must have been King Edward himself – of how my lord had sent me to warn his brother to escape and how Warwick's knights had run away. I explained how I had tried to help him. I gasped out the remainder of my sorry story quickly as the memory was so painful. The tall fair-haired Duke of Clarence, who stood next to King Edward, eyed me incredulously.

‘So you stayed with Warwick when the others deserted him?'

‘Yes, my lord.'

He shrugged contemptuously.

‘Then you were a fool to have done so.'

I looked up at the traitorous Clarence with loathing.

‘Doubtless you would think so, my lord.'

The pain as his foot hit my wounded leg was indescribable and sweat, mingled with tears, ran down my face as I waited for the next blow. But someone must have pulled him away for another blow didn't come. The knights waited for the king to decide my fate.

‘Have him tended, Anthony,' King Edward said.

He looked down at me coldly.

‘In future, Lovell, show your allegiance to me, not to my inferiors.'

A man-at-arms remained with me as the group departed. He systematically searched the body of the Earl of Warwick. A series of muttered curses indicated that he had been unable to find anything of value. I ignored him and lay perfectly still. I guessed that presently men would come and I would be treated. Until they arrived, I dwelled on the murdered earl and his dead brother Montague. I grieved for them; the two men whom I had respected most in the world were no more.

C
HAPTER
3

I
sighed with pleasure as sunlight suddenly flooded the abbey garden. Its warmth would not only enhance the colours of the flowers but also bring out their scent. It was peaceful here now as the brothers were no longer weeding the cellarer's vegetable garden nor tending the physic plants. They had left a few moments ago, some to work in the neighbouring cherry orchard, others to weed the abbey's fish ponds.

I closed my eyes and sniffed the air to see which of the herbs I could identify. I had only got as far as thyme, meadowsweet and peppermint when a more pungent smell told me that my self-appointed guardian was once again checking that all was well with me.

Sure enough when I looked up I saw Esau's great shaggy head inches from my face with concern in his eyes. I stroked him to reassure him and, with a contented sigh, the enormous hound sank down again. As I looked at him, I wondered for the hundredth time about his ancestry. There was something of the mastiff about him and his sheer size hinted at wolfhound, but then neither wolfhounds nor mastiffs are covered in tangled brown hair, and both breeds have tails, which Esau did not. It seemed that he had simply appeared at the abbey a couple of years before and the kindly monks had felt pity for the half-starved dog with a length of cord tied round his neck. They had taken him in and cared for him. Within weeks, the newly named Esau had become a fully-fledged member of the community. Ostensibly he served as a watch dog, but in reality his role was to be an outlet for the affection of these loveless men.

My own arrival at the abbey must have caused Esau considerable anxiety for by now he was used to the routine of abbey life and familiar with the sounds around him. He had grown used to the tolling bells and subsequent chanting that came from the abbey church, and he knew to expect to hear the soft pad of sandals on worn flagstones when the monks left their services. And, above all things, Esau was used to long periods of monastic silence.

I was not quiet, though, which worried Esau. Unlike the others, I did not move serenely in a contemplative manner, clicking my paternoster beads but rather thudded my crutch into the ground and heaved myself forward panting loudly. And there was my whistling; no one else in the abbey whistled. I whistled, when occasionally I had the breath, to tell myself that my leg did not hurt when it touched the ground, and I whistled to try and ignore the pain from the chaffing under my armpit. Esau did not know this though. My movements were strange and my noises unfamiliar. With his wooden cross on its chain bouncing against his chest, he bounded towards me to investigate.

Quite what he made of my crippled figure leaning on the crutch, I do not know. But his growling stopped and his hackles went down. He sniffed me curiously and evidently decided that far from being a threat, I plainly needed his help. He licked the sweat and tears of frustration from my face and then moved protectively to my side.

Thereafter, in the two years that I spent at the abbey, he never left my side. He escorted me on my painfully slow journeys of exploration around the abbey. We fell into following the same familiar route, starting at the guest houses and stumbling towards the granary. At the brew house Esau would stop to allow me to catch my breath, and then he would nudge me on towards the almonry. I fell frequently, but on each occasion Esau was always there. He would stand over me protectively while I scrabbled for my crutch and then moved over so that I could use his bulk to haul myself up again. And it was the constant presence of Esau that gave me the confidence to venture further and further each day.

But the confines of the abbey were stifling and I welcomed my wife's letters since they exposed me to events in the world outside. It was from Nan that I learned that having defeated her Uncles Warwick and Montague at Barnet, King Edward had gone on to defeat a second Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury. There was a rumour, it appeared, that the former King Henry had been put to death by the victorious Yorkists and that, with his death, the wars were finally over. I had received the news indifferently since the wars had ended for me with the deaths of my Lords of Warwick and Montague. On re-reading Nan's letter though, I could not but note how formally it had been written. Why, it could have been sent to a stranger. Then I supposed that we were in effect strangers to one another. We might have been married for several years, but we had only met on three occasions and knew next to nothing of each other. With Esau panting at my side, I resolved to write to Nan to tell her of my life under her Uncles Warwick and Montague and ask her about her own family.

A few months later, after the exchange of a few letters, I was more familiar with their lives in Yorkshire and described my routine in the abbey in return. Clearly my letters amused Nan, which I had hoped for. She was glad I had a companion in Esau, but urged me to ensure that he got at least some meat to supplement his fish diet.

As our correspondence increased, so did our confidence. We talked of where we would eventually live in the North when I inherited my estates and of my desire to serve on the Scottish borders before settling down. It had been Nan's Uncle Montague who had trained me in that particular branch of warfare, and I owed it to his memory to put his teachings to good use.

Gradually news of the outside world infused Nan's letters. She wrote indignantly of King Edward's lack of sensitivity in appointing his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to rule the North. Nan understood that someone had to fill the political vacuum left by her Uncles Warwick and Montague's deaths, but obviously no loyal man would accept Gloucester as their successor. I shared her opinion. No one could replace Warwick and Montague in the North and no one would swear loyalty to Gloucester. I realised that this refusal, in my own case, would rule out any chances of serving on the Scottish borders, but that did nothing to shake my own resolve.

As the months passed, Nan's comments about Gloucester became less hostile and at times almost placatory. She wrote fair-mindedly of what she had heard about him.

‘…from all that I have heard men account him to be a good soldier who fought well at Barnet and Tewksbury and people here are impressed by that because we need good soldiers to keep the Scots at bay.

And then people say that Gloucester will be no absentee landlord but rather he will look to make his home among us in the North. My brother Richard told me that he has heard that Gloucester is exchanging his holdings in other parts of England for estates in the North and Richard believes that this sounds promising for us here.

But on top of all that Francis, everyone can see that King Edward is backing his brother Gloucester. He is positively showering him with honours and it is said that the king wants to make his brother even greater than Uncle Warwick and Uncle Montague.

Of course, dearest Francis, this will never be the case but while I am embarrassed to admit it, I do wonder whether I might not have been a trifle hasty in my initial reaction to Gloucester's appointment…'