by Paul Doherty
‘For God, King Henry and Saint George!’
The trumpets brayed brazenly into the darkness and the three battle phalanxes, archers and gunners, fired into the wall of fog. The Yorkist trumpets shrilled fiercely back; there were shouts and Warwick’s heart lurched as, out of the fog, charged rank after rank of mailed men.
‘Advance!’ Warwick shouted.
Moresby, the captain of his guard, repeated the orders: the standard-bearers went forward and, with a crash which shattered the eerie darkness, the two armies clashed into a furious melee of twisting, whirling swords, spears and battle-axes. The air dinned with curses, prayers, cries of the dying, shrieks of horror and pain, as men fought in the misty darkness, drenching the soft earth ankle-deep in blood. Warwick wiped the sweat from his brow, peering into the darkness to glimpse his brother’s banner. Beside it, the great blue-and-gold banner of York displayed a sun in splendour. Shouts and cries from the left made him whirl. Warwick watched in horror as a great white standard bearing a Red Boar Rampant appeared on the ridge, driving Exeter’s men back towards him. York’s brother, Richard of Gloucester, was trying to take them in the rear. Warwick rapped out orders, instructing the bulk of his reserve to go to Exeter’s aid. The Red Boar Rampant disappeared. Warwick heaved a sigh of relief, grasped the Eye of God and prayed his patron saint, Archangel Michael, would come to his aid. He heard a shout from the melee in front of him and glimpsed more Yorkist banners around that of his brother. King Edward himself was leading in his reserve, hacking a path through to confront Montagu. Warwick moved his own small force forward. Within minutes he was part of that wall of steel, helmet on, visor down, hacking and hewing at anything which appeared through the slits of his helm. The Yorkists began to give. Warwick withdrew, drenched in sweat, his silver, gold-chased armour, the personal gift of Louis XI of France, now a rusty colour, spattered with blood and bits of bone. Warwick, his squires and pages around him, took off his helmet and stood gasping for air. He turned to the squire beside him and grasped the man by the shoulder.
‘Brandon!’ he shouted, ‘Brandon, victory is ours!’
Suddenly, from the misty fog to Warwick’s right, came screams and sudden movement. Bowmen were breaking away, loosing arrows at the horsemen appearing before them. Men were shouting, ‘Treason! Treason!’
‘In heaven’s name!’ Warwick screamed. ‘Brandon, Montagu’s men, they are attacking Oxford!’
Warwick ran across the battlefield, but the damage was done. Oxford, who had driven one party of Yorkists from the field, had now unexpectedly returned. Montagu’s men, thinking they were the enemy, loosed a volley of arrows. Oxford’s soldiers, sensing betrayal, cried ‘Treason!’ broke and fled. The shouts were now taken up by Montagu’s troops. Panic rippled along the battle line, which began to break as men turned to flee. Messengers ran up, breathless, hot-eyed. Montagu was down! John Neville was dead! Warwick groaned but he had not time to listen. The trickle of fugitives was swelling. Men running away, throwing down their arms, ripping off their armour.
‘Aidez moi!’ the Earl shouted.
He pointed his sword to the battle line, urging the last of his household forward whilst he and a few squires stood beneath his banner, but to no avail. The now buckling battle lines shuddered and broke. Any semblance of order disappeared, even the household knights were shouting the day was lost. Warwick, grasping the Eye of God, stared round, he opened his mouth to shout but no words came out. An arrow whipped by his face as foot soldiers, wearing the livery of York, broke into view. Brandon, Moresby and the rest began to run. Warwick too, his breath coming in short, choking gasps. He was weighted down by steel, the prospect of death and defeat seemed to coil like serpents about him.
‘Tout est perdu!’ he whispered.
The horse line came into sight. Oh, thank God! Brandon was leading his horse forward but Warwick tripped, squelching in the mud, rose and lumbered forward. Behind him the Yorkist foot soldiers leapt and yelped like dogs. He reached the horse, grasped the bridle and found he hadn’t the strength to mount.
‘My lord.’ Anxious-eyed, Moresby took the Earl’s hand, gesturing at Brandon next to him to control their restless horses.
‘My lord, you should flee.’
Warwick plucked the Eye of God from round his neck and thrust it into Brandon’s hands.
‘Take it!’ he gasped. ‘Go to the monks at Canterbury. My last gift. Ask them to pray for my soul!’
Moresby and Brandon were about to protest but Warwick shoved them away. The young men hurriedly mounted as a band of Yorkists reached Warwick. The Earl turned, struggling, but he was pushed to the ground, his visor clawed up. A foot soldier, sitting on his chest, thrust a knife into the Earl’s throat. The Earl jerked once, twice, as his life and ambitions were snuffed out like candlelight. In the darkness, Brandon and the other horsemen rode away even as Colum Murtagh, the King’s messenger, reached the group of soldiers now greedily stripping the rich armour from Warwick’s body.
‘He’s dead!’ one of them screamed. ‘The enemy’s dead! The great Warwick is cut short!’ He peered up at Colum. ‘You are too late for the riches. Rules of war! We got him! We killed him, his armour’s ours!’
‘I came to save his life,’ Colum muttered, staring pityingly down at Warwick’s white corpse, now naked except for a loincloth.
‘What’s the use of that?’ another soldier shouted, now cavorting with Warwick’s richly gilt helm on the end of his spear.
Colum shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But His Grace the King demands the pendant with its priceless sapphire.’
‘What pendant?’ the soldiers shouted. ‘Before God, master, there is no cross or jewel!’
Colum insisted that they empty their wallets and purses. At last, convinced of their truthfulness if not their honesty, he turned his horse and returned to the King with the news that the Earl of Warwick was dead and the Eye of God had vanished.
The crossroads were bathed in the light of a hunter’s moon and the chains of the gibbet glowed silver-like in the ghostly moonlight. The corpse dangling from the rotting rope hung motionless, as if listening for some sound from the desolate moorland which bounded the coastal road out of Canterbury. The woman waiting in the shadows found it difficult to keep still. She wetted her lips anxiously and peered into the darkness. The message was quite simple. She had to be here before midnight and yet she wished she could flee. She pushed her red hair back and felt the sweat coursing down her cheeks.
‘Of course I could have refused,’ she murmured to herself. She bit her lip. But what then? If I didn’t come here, they would come for me, she thought. She heard a soft shuffling sound in the grass behind her. A twig cracked. She whirled round, her hand going to the dagger pushed into her belt. No one was there, only a silver-dappled fox trotted across the glade fringed by a line of bushes from the crossroads. The fox abruptly stopped, ears cocked, one foreleg slightly raised as it looked towards her. The animal’s head turned, its eyes glinted a dullish red and the woman moaned in terror. Was it an animal? Or some malevolent ghost of the night? Some demon in the form of an animal? The fox looked at her once more, twitched its nose and then trotted on. The woman closed her eyes; she let out a deep sigh and turned back to look at the gibbet. She cut off her half-strangled cry of shock at the hooded, cowled figure now standing beside the scaffold. She would have crouched down and hid, but the shadow knew she was there. A gloved hand came up and beckoned her forward. She froze, her mouth going dry, her heart thudding like the beat of a drum.
‘Come!’ the voice ordered softly. ‘Megan, come here!’
The woman rose to her feet. She just wished her legs would stop shaking. Her smock was drenched in a cold sweat, which the cold night air caught to deepen her chill.
‘Will you not come?’ The voice was sweet and low. ‘You have no reason to be afraid.’
Megan stepped out from behind the bushes and walked slowly across to the stranger.
‘Oh, come closer,’ t
he voice repeated, a slight testiness there, like some benevolent father who was beginning to lose patience with a recalcitrant child.
Megan edged nearer. She tried to control the panic which threatened to reduce her to pitiful sobs or hysterical cries. She knew she must not do that, otherwise the stranger might suspect she was planning some attack or a secret ambush. However, if she turned and ran, the stranger would make sure that this would be her last night on earth. Megan licked her dry lips and walked head high, drawing so close she smelt the rottenness from the gibbet. She glimpsed the cadaverous skull and face of the hanged man, twisted to one side, so in the pale moonlight it looked as if he were grinning at her. The stranger had positioned himself well. The cowled cloak obscured every part of him whilst the mask across his face only revealed sharp white teeth and the glittering malice of his one good eye.
‘I did come,’ Megan murmured. ‘I came as you said.’
‘Of course you did.’ The stranger’s voice now had a gentle Gaelic lilt. His hand suddenly shot out and gripped her by the shoulder, squeezing hard like a metal vice. Megan closed her eyes and moaned in terror.
‘Look around you, Megan!’ He shook her. ‘Look around!’
He loosened his grip and the woman did as she was told, staring round the tall, dark trees of Blean Wood.
‘A strange place,’ the man murmured. ‘People say that here, magicians clothe themselves in long skins, the hides of animals with immense tails still attached. They are faceless and call upon Merderus, Queen of the Night, to come to their aid. Do you believe that? In Ireland we do.’
Despite the lilting accent of the stranger, if she told the truth, Megan was more terrified of him than any legion of hags flying through the dark watches of the night to attend Black Sabbaths or blasphemous Masses.
The man sighed. ‘They say the war is finished,’ he continued as if they were exchanging gossip. ‘Did you know that, eh, girl?’ He laughed abruptly. ‘But of course you do. The Lancastrians are piled waist-deep and their blood soaks the hills of Barnet and Tewkesbury. King Edward the Fourth has come back to his own with his pretty doll-like queen and cruel brothers. And everyone has to go back home. No more killing time, just peace, until the next time.’
‘What do you want?’ Megan stammered.
‘You know what we want,’ the man replied. ‘Edward the Fourth has settled his grievance with Lancaster. Now we must settle our grievances and you’ll assist us, won’t you, at the given time? When the message comes through, you will do what I say, won’t you? We share the same blood, as did the traitor Colum Murtagh.’
Megan, white-faced, gazed back in round-eyed terror.
‘Swear!’ the stranger hissed. He forced her hand up against the slime-stained gibbet. ‘Swear now to me, Padraig Fitzroy!’
Megan could stand the terror no longer.
‘I swear!’ she screamed. ‘I swear! I swear! I swear!’
Megan pulled her hand loose and sank sobbing to her knees, her long hair flying out around her, but when she looked up, the stranger had gone. The crossroads were deserted, the silence broken only by the gibbet creaking in a cold, quickening south-westerly wind. Megan patted her red sweat-soaked hair and stared into the night. She was Irish-born and knew the horrors of the blood-feud: the Hounds of Ulster were in England and hunting her master. Colum Murtagh was their quarry and she was to be the bait.
Chapter 1
‘Show me the wound!’
The soldier pulled back the sleeve of his leather jerkin, then the dirty white linen of his shirt. The arm beneath was lean, brown and muscular except for the long suppurating gash just above the wrist. The woman leaned down and sniffed it gently. She noticed the green-yellow pus and caught a faint whiff of putrefaction. The scar was now an angry welt. The poison from the wound was creating a small circle of red which was seeping up the rest of the arm.
‘Are you going to cure it or eat it?’ the soldier gibed.
Kathryn Swinbrooke, leech, apothecary and physician, stared hard at the soldier.
‘The wound’s suppurating,’ she said tartly. ‘Who ever dressed it was an ignorant quack.’
‘In which case, Mistress Swinbrooke, that was me!’
Kathryn half-smiled.
‘Turn away,’ she said. ‘Thomasina,’ she called to her plump, merry-faced nurse, ‘pass me the knife.’
Thomasina was holding the blade of a long cutting knife over a candle flame. She didn’t know why, but Kathryn always insisted on this, as had her father, poor physician Swinbrooke, who now lay under the cold slabs of Saint Mildred’s Church in Canterbury.
Thomasina lapsed into a day-dream. She wished they were back there, in their house in Ottemelle Lane, where she could nag Agnes the scullery maid and listen to the chatter of young Wuf. Thomasina bit her lip. But oh no, she thought, thanks to that bloody Irishman, Colum Murtagh, she, her mistress and the Irish adventurer were now in the middle of London, preparing to go up-river for an audience with the King himself. Except Murtagh had still not finished dressing and Kathryn was now examining the wrist of this hard-faced captain of the guard who had come to escort them up the Thames to the Tower.
‘Thomasina, are you asleep?’
Startled, Thomasina looked up, smiled her apologies and handed the ivory-handled, sharp knife to her mistress.
‘You shouldn’t do it,’ Thomasina moaned. ‘Your best taffeta dress.’ She glared disapprovingly at the tawny-coloured material as if searching for any speck or mark.
‘Thomasina, it’s only a cut. I’ll clean it, then we’ll be gone.’ Kathryn smiled at the soldier. ‘This may hurt.’
The crop-headed soldier, his hard, unshaven face tense, just nodded, half-embarrassed by the kindness of this lady who smelt so sweet. As Kathryn began to cut slightly at the wound, the soldier studied the female physician. She is hardly buxom, he thought, her jet-black hair showed strands of grey and her face was slightly severe. Nevertheless, he secretly admired her creamy complexion, finely arched eyebrows and that small, straight nose, now sniffing at the pus beginning to seep from the small inflamed cut.
‘How did it happen?’ Kathryn looked up.
No, the soldier reflected, on second thoughts she was beautiful. Her lips were full and red, her eyes a serene sea-grey, honest and direct.
‘How did it happen?’ she repeated.
‘I cut it,’ the soldier mumbled, glancing away. ‘On a piece of rusty chain mail.’
‘If it ever happens again,’ Kathryn said severely, though the soldier saw a glint of amusement in her eyes, ‘wash it as I am going to do now.’
And before the soldier could object, Kathryn closed the lips of the wound together, forcing out blood and pus. She then poured a jug of hot water over it, making him wince. After that she rubbed some ointment round the wound, her fingers soft and gentle. Kathryn then took a roll of gauze-like bandage from a small basket held by the fearsome Thomasina, and bound it tightly round his wrist.
‘There!’ Kathryn inserted a small pin. ‘That will keep the bandage secure.’
The soldier shuffled from one foot to the other. Kathryn smiled to herself at how a little gentleness could change someone. When he had first entered the hostelry, the captain had looked fierce with his conical helmet cradled under his arm, boiled leather jacket, woollen hose, heavy boots and that great sword-belt strapped across one shoulder, with the naked sword hanging from a hook and two daggers strapped to his waist.
‘I have come,’ he had announced, ‘to escort Master Murtagh, marshal of the King’s household and the King’s Special Commissioner in Canterbury, and Mistress Swinbrooke, physician of the same city, to His Grace the King at the Tower.’
Colum, who had scarcely finished breaking his fast, curtly told him he would have to wait. Whilst Murtagh had gone up to his chamber, Kathryn had noticed how the captain had been favouring his left arm, found the cause and immediately insisted on treating it.
‘What do I owe you, Mistress?’ he now asked.
Kat
hryn shook her head ‘A safe passage to the Tower and there will be no fee.’
The soldier coughed, muttered his thanks and went out into the cobbled yard. He yelled orders at his small escort of royal archers who were lounging there, ogling the slatterns and maids.
‘I am ready.’ Colum came downstairs. He blew a kiss at Thomasina, who just glared back, and made a mock bow at Kathryn.
‘Quite the courtier,’ Kathryn teased.
She stared at the Irishman. His black unruly hair was now carefully combed; his dark, swarthy face shaven. Although he had spent the night roistering with a friend at a Cheapside tavern, Colum’s blue eyes were clear, and his face, which reminded Kathryn of a hunting falcon, was relaxed and smiling. Colum had dressed in his best: a white cambric shirt, a doublet of murrey fringed with lamb’s-wool, which hung down mid-calf, and matching hose of motley colours. He, too, had strapped his great war-belt round his waist with its long sticking-dagger and broad-hilted sword.
‘Should you wear them?’ Kathryn asked. ‘I thought you said that in the King’s presence . . .?’
‘Oh, I will have to take it off,’ Colum replied, flicking some dust from the quilted front of his doublet. ‘But this is London, Kathryn, the streets are thronged with every rogue under the sun. But come, let’s go!’
Colum strode out into the yard. The archers sprang to their feet, and with the captain leading three men before them, and three more trailing behind, they went through Budge Row, into the Walbrook, then down to the Steelyard near Dowgate where the royal barge would be waiting for them. Kathryn gripped Colum’s arm; the day was fair and the crowds were out, shoving their way either up Cheapside or, like them, down to the river. Great houses, their plaster white as snow against beams of polished black, jutted out above them, almost blocking out the weak morning sun. Colum whispered to Kathryn to be careful. She lifted the hem of her skirts, stepping round puddles, wrinkling her nose at the open filled sewer which ran down the centre of the street. Yet the bustle of the streets excited her: pedlars and tinkers running up and down shouting their wares; merchants in their great beaver hats and quilted cloaks standing together in corners, sharing gossip about which ships were in and what commodities were available. A wedding party, making its way up to a church in Trinity, forced its way through: a group of giggling young men and women, their faces already flushed with drink. Beggars whined on the corners of alley-ways. A pardoner, garbed from head to toe in dirty white rags, tried to sell indulgences on scraps of tawdry parchment. Children baited dogs, housewives chattered in the shadows of doorways. Two friars, their faces hooded, walked behind a man, a forger who had been condemned to carry a huge boulder from one end of the city to the other.