by Clint Dohmen
“Perhaps the husband killed him?” Lord Blythe asked hopefully.
“Unfortunately, non. I think it’s most likely that after London, he realized his danger and started taking precautions. Perhaps he made one of the ruffians in London talk before slicing him open? I had the impression that the witness was quite charmed by this Simon Lang, so perhaps she left that detail out of the story she told me.”
Lord Blythe was becoming exasperated. “But finally you killed him, right?”
“Not as such.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“Eventually I tracked him to Venice, but he was gone by the time I arrived.”
“Gone where?”
“To his death, I’m relatively sure. Venice was buzzing with the news that he was part of some ridiculous adventure to sail to China. The last I heard of him was that he’d started up the Nile River from Alexandria. That was over six months ago.”
Lord Blythe sighed deeply. It was not the information he was hoping for, but at least the young Lang was not hiding in Brittany, scheming to take his castle back.
“I wish for you to remain in my employ until you can confirm Simon Lang’s fate. It seems I won’t be getting any satisfaction this morning.”
“Amen,” mumbled the servant girl, as she skipped from the bed.
Chapter 17
Gloucestershire, England
THE HORSES BORE their riders south from Warwick Castle, following the Avon River down to a small market town. The galloping turned into a trot as the band of men entered the village of crooked shops, pubs, and houses decorated in the favored style of blackened oak beams and white walls. The group continued past the Old Black Bear Inn to the nearby abbey.
Tewkesbury Abbey stood on elevated ground overlooking the market town. The magnificent Norman abbey with its pristine surroundings was a world apart from the squalid town below it. Like most medieval settlements, the roads were covered with mud, horseshit, and the contents of pisspots. Filth and disease were plentiful. Castles and abbeys were located on higher ground not just for defensive reasons but sanitation. The shit always washed downhill.
The horses came to a halt in front of a cream-yellow stone structure. Jurassic limestone imported from France made up the walls of the Romanesque church. It was the same stone that had been used to build the Tower of London and Canterbury Cathedral. The abbey was serene and beautiful, but the peace of the night was quickly broken as two soldiers dismounted and shouted at a passing monk.
“You! Over here! Now!”
The Benedictine monk was startled as the soldiers moved to confront him. One drew his sword and pointed it at his throat while the other roughly frisked his black habit.
“All clear,” they announced back to the lone figure still mounted on his horse. The monk was not used to being treated this way. After all, he had the power to condemn a man’s soul to eternal damnation. What mortal man has the temerity to treat me this way? wondered the monk.
Richard, the Duke of Gloucester and brother to King Edward IV, feared no man or monk. His feet landed in the mud as he dismounted and walked quickly towards the abbey entrance.
“Stay here,” Richard gruffly ordered his men. “Do not let anybody in.” Richard looked tired and sounded edgy.
The monk recognized the Duke of Gloucester by his handsome facial features and slightly stooped back. “Thank you, sire, for coming to our humble monastery,” the monk said nervously as Richard strode purposefully past him. ‘Humble’ wasn’t the word to describe the Benedictine monastery. It was one of the richest monasteries in all England.
“Is this your first time to the Abbey?” the monk asked as he stared. The king’s brother’s shoulders were not level due to a malformed spine, and he appeared to be unusually slender. In fact, the monk thought he had an almost feminine build, but he nonetheless moved with power and authority.
“No, you know damn well it’s not. Take me to the vault.”
The monk smiled, but his mind was racing. He was most uneasy. The monk certainly did know about Richard and his history with the abbey. It took a month to reconsecrate it after all the blood he and his brother spilled inside.
As they entered the doorway, the monk’s eyes unconsciously shot to the sacristy door. Behind it was a large vaulted chamber full of treasure. The door itself was reinforced with steel from the armor and swords of Lancastrian knights who had been slaughtered on these very grounds. After the Yorkist victory at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, a number of Lancastrian knights and their squires had sought sanctuary in the abbey. The henchmen of Richard and his brother King Edward had viciously dragged the men out, violating the law of sanctuary, and butchered them.
“Beautiful,” Richard remarked. The silent, dark, and cold atmosphere comforted his restless mind. As the two walked towards the high altar, Richard admired the sculpted nave, high vaulted ceilings, and great Norman columns. He looked approvingly at the stained glass depicting knights in full armor as well as King Solomon and King David.
“The vault is just behind the marble altar near the Beauchamp Chapel,” the monk said in a low tone.
“I’m aware,” Richard replied dismissively. The doors leading to the vault were open, and the two carefully descended the stone stairs. Five candles lit the small room. Richard walked towards an elaborately decorated tomb.
“Thank you, you may leave,” Richard said quietly but firmly.
“If you require my assistance, I will be waiting in the chapter house.” The monk bowed gracefully and ascended the stone stairs, grateful to leave a company that was welcome to neither party.
Richard knelt and crossed himself in front of the vault. He ran his hand slowly across the stone effigy. Richard waited until he heard the footsteps of the monk disappear. He was desperate to speak and clear his conscience. “I am sorry, brother. I should have saved you,” Richard whispered. “I betrayed you.”
He turned suddenly; he thought he heard a noise. Is somebody trying to sneak up on me? There was no one. He turned back to the tomb where the bones of his brother George, the Duke of Clarence, lay.
Richard’s voice became erratic. “I can no longer trust anybody, not even my own family. Is it your ghost seeking revenge? I think Edward wants to kill me, too. I need to be careful. He is cunning, and I no longer believe he is of our father’s blood. He probably wants me dead.” His breathing was quick and shallow. “People are speaking behind my back. I think Edward is spreading rumors. Even those filthy peasants say, ‘Bentback Dick is a paranoid prick.’ They don’t think I know it, but I know it.” Richard again looked around to see if he had been followed. “It will not be tolerated much longer.”
“Is he agitated?” the elderly abbot asked, as the monk entered the chapter house.
The head abbot knew Richard. He had witnessed the duke’s ruthless streak after the battle of Tewkesbury.
“I am not sure.”
The abbot looked at the young monk. “You know about his brother George, don’t you?”
“I have heard rumors.”
The abbot shut the oak door as quietly as he could. “When George’s body came to the Abbey to be buried, it smelled of wine from head to foot.”
“So, it is true. He drowned in a barrel of wine, like the stories say.”
“He drowned in a barrel of wine or was drowned in a barrel of wine, I cannot say. As you know, King Edward ordered him executed for high treason, but whether he was executed quietly or actually drowned of his own accord we will never know.” The abbot looked around. “But Edward was a bastard. George, being older than Richard, was the rightful heir to the throne.”
“A bastard?” the monk said, sounding stunned, although he had heard the rumor before.
“In France, they call Edward the Bastard of Rouen. They say he’s the product of a stout English longbowman, hence his six-foot-four frame, taller than any of his forbears. From a source I shall not disclose, Edward’s purported father, Richard Plantagenet, was nowhere near h
is mother Cecily Neville nine months prior to Edward’s birth. I cannot confirm the story of the longbowman.”
The monk could not hide his shock. “Richard sided with Edward, knowing George was his only full-blooded brother.”
“Yes, though I don’t know if he was aware that Edward planned to have George killed.”
“It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone insane with guilt.”
Chapter 18
The Pig and Whistle Pub, Exeter
“WHERE IS THAT damnable bar maid?” Maurice, the long-bearded, grizzled proprietor of the Pig and Whistle bellowed out to no one in particular.
“Sod off, you old git,” Maureen spat as she walked in from the street, smoothing out her hair and fastening on her apron.
“I expect my employees to be here on time, woman, and you’re at least two hours late.”
“Well, you know what I say about expectations.”
“Expectations lead to disappointment?”
“Indeed. A circumstance your wife is no doubt intimately familiar with.”
Maurice spluttered for a moment. “She bore me three strapping sons, she did.”
“Aye, strapping they are, smart they’re not.” Maureen cocked an eyebrow as she began polishing goblets and pints. “It’s a shame they don’t take after the missus more.”
“So who were you shagging that kept it up this late into the morning?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I spent the night being properly wined and dined in the castle by his lordship,” Maureen blatantly mischaracterized her romp with a straight face. “I stole a good bit of breakfast before I left this morning, too. Nothing like the shite we eat around here.”
“You cook the food we eat around here.”
“Like I said.”
“Well,” Maurice persisted, “your shagging of Yorkist swan scoffers is interfering with my business. The traveler at the end of the bar has been waiting an hour for food.”
“I wasn’t just shagging any Yorkist swan scoffer,” Maureen said. “I was shagging the head Yorkist swan scoffer around these parts, and it brought me more coin than you pay me in a month. Maybe if you paid me what I’m worth, I wouldn’t have to go around swallowing inchworms to earn a living.”
She had a valid point, but they both knew he couldn’t afford to pay her more money. The disastrous loss of nearly thirty thousand men in the Lancastrian defeat at Towton had reduced the male population of the surrounding countryside by fully eighty percent, and the punishing taxes levied by Lord Percy Blythe kept the remaining twenty percent of the original population at home. Most of the pub’s customers were Yorkist leeches who had come at Blythe’s solicitation, and the rest were soldiers from the castle garrison. Maurice, himself one of the rare survivors of the massacre at Towton, despised serving his new masters, but unlike the dead, he still had to provide for his family. Occasionally, travelers would pass through and stop for a meal, as was the case today.
“Go see to our customer and shut your gob,” he said.
“You keep bellyaching, and I won’t tell you what I heard in the castle.”
Maurice noticed the middle-aged traveler perk up, though whether it was due to Maureen’s remark or the fact that he was finally going to get some service, Maurice couldn’t tell.
“It sounds like you’re not a fan of the lord of the manor,” the traveler responded as Maurice moved closer.
“I’m not. Neither him nor any of the land-thieving scum he brought with him, and I’m too old to care who hears me say it.”
“Well, in that case, my name is Jasper, though I’d appreciate it if you kept that between us. I go by John in unfriendly territory, and by unfriendly, I mean anywhere ruled by Yorkists.”
“Well you’re in friendly enough company at the moment, good sir. I don’t get many in here that I like to serve. Let me buy you an ale.”
“I have coin enough and some extra to boot if your waitress wouldn’t mind sharing her story with me, too.”
“If you have coin, she’ll likely want to share more with you than her information.”
Maureen reappeared from the kitchen in time to hear this remark. “He’s not wrong. I’m an easy fuck. How about it?”
“Tempting as your offer is, madam,” Jasper said, “I should like to stick with hearing what you learned in the castle today. I’ll pay well for good information. It’s somewhat the purpose of my travels.”
“All right, then. It seems Lord Little Pecker has hired people to kill the young Lord Lang, but he’s still alive.”
“Young Lord Lang?” Jasper inquired.
Maurice answered. “Aye, Simon Lang, he’s the rightful heir to the castle. I watched his father fall at Towton. Bravest man I’ve ever seen.”
“You were at Towton?” Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke and guardian uncle to Henry Tudor, aspirant to the Crown of England, seemed genuinely surprised. He hadn’t fought at Towton, but he knew very few Lancastrians had survived the unchivalrous post-battle slaughter. He himself had personally experienced Yorkist chivalry when they beheaded his father after the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross.
“Aye, Palm Sunday, 1461, I was in that freezing meadow in North Yorkshire.”
“Oh, don’t let him get started, he’ll never stop,” Maureen cut in.
“This one lost her man that day.” Maurice directed a glance at his tavern maid. “Stout lad Timmy was, watched my back all day.” Maurice crossed himself here, and Jasper thought he could see moisture building in Maureen’s eyes, which she quickly wiped away.
“Fat lot of good it did him.” Maureen wanted to head back to the kitchen, but like nightmares that she couldn’t leave until she woke up, she could never escape the draw of hearing about her husband. She knew he’d had no choice but to go and fight. You didn’t refuse your lord’s call to arms, but she couldn’t help blaming him for dying. It wasn’t the degrading shambles her life had become after his death that bothered her. She was more or less numb to that. It was the loss of his love. He had loved her, and she him, and without that love, she was hollow inside.
Maurice continued, and Jasper showed no signs of cutting him off. “Eighty thousand Englishmen out to kill each other that day. Couldn’t see a thing through the snow, but somehow their archers found the mark and ours didn’t. It rained arrows until the gentility could stand it no longer. When they find a weak spot in the armor, bodkin-tipped arrows don’t discriminate knight from plebe. No doubt the growing losses amongst the peerage inspired our attack. We left our hill and charged up theirs in whiteout conditions. Whatever my thoughts about the high and mighty” — Maurice paused here – “excuse my bluntness, sir, as I can see from the cut of your thread, that you are one of my betters.”
“I value bluntness, good man, please continue.”
“Well, as I was saying, Simon’s father was not chastising us from behind. He led from the front. A true knight he was. After eight hours of fighting we had nearly pushed those bastards all the way back up their hill. Timmy’s axe was drenched in Yorkist blood, and my spear had done its fair share of work, too.” Maurice remembered this moment of lost glory with a mixture of pride and sadness at what could have been. “Then I saw that flag: three golden lions on a crimson background. The Duke of Norfolk and thousands of his fresh troops arrived just in time to save their arses. We were drained from fighting all day, and we didn’t have a chance. All around his lordship, the men dropped their weapons and ran, but he just kept fighting. It was then that I lost good Tim. They couldn’t take him down in hand-to-hand combat, so they felled him with an arrow. He died right away, though, no pain, which was a mercy after what happened next.”
Maureen let a tear fall as emotion exerted a rare controlling influence over her. She could smell the black pudding starting to cook on the grill, so she left to tend to it. She knew the rest of the story anyway.
“Lord Lang stood at the crest of the hill, outlined against the sky like a painting. His armor was battered and he was beset on all sides, but
he refused to give an inch. Finally, a mallet blow knocked him down from behind. Then the Yorkist peasants descended upon him. They mutilated his body and robbed his corpse till he lay naked in the mud and the snow.”
Maurice spat on the floor in disgust. “They did the same to all who couldn’t escape that day. The Yorkists hunted and slaughtered everyone they could find, regardless of rank. By the end of the day, the creeks were choked with bodies, and the rivers were dirty shades of brown and crimson. I’m not ashamed to say that I hid under dead bodies until I escaped in the dark. I couldn’t afford a noble last stand. I’ve got three boys working down at the docks, and a wife who deserves better than me. But that Simon, he’s got genuine heroic blood running through his veins. Mark my words, he’ll come calling one day, and there will be hell to pay for both his father and mother.”
Maureen returned with a cup of ale for the traveler and a fragrant plate of grilled blood pudding that Jasper immediately set into. “It’s sad what they did to his mother. She was always good to the poor. And to make the boy watch her head being lopped off was just cruel.”
“That would be your bedmate from last night, you shameless whore.”
“All the virtue in the world doesn’t put food in my mouth or a roof over my head. Speaking of which,” she looked at Jasper, “you said something about coin.”
“Did you hear anything else?” Jasper asked.
“I heard that that Simon sailed off on some foolish venture to someplace called Cheena from which he is not expected to return, though they’ll be waiting for him if he does. I also heard that Lord Blythe is planning further mischief to bring Exeter to heel, although what more he could possibly do, I can’t imagine.”
Maurice cut in. “Natural-born sailor, that boy. Used to run away down to the docks where he learned the trade. His mother would nearly skin him alive, but then after she was executed, there was no one to stop him. The boy could take some rough treatment, too, I’ll tell you that. Being an orphaned noble boy didn’t do him any favors on the docks or on the ships, but it didn’t take long before he was giving better than he got. Eventually, when you combined the weapons training he got on account of being a noble, with the toughness he picked up down on the docks, no one but out-of-towners who didn’t know any better would mess with him.”