by Paul Doherty
‘Now,’ Zeigler ordered.
Two of his coven, seasoned crossbow archers, lifted their arbalests and released the catch. The bolts sped out; one struck a guard, smashing into his skull. The other caught the second high in the shoulder. The latter staggered to his feet, his ragged clothing flapping under the cutting breeze: a grotesque sight illuminated by the flames leaping up from the makeshift fire. A second bolt was loosed, catching him full in his bearded face, and the guard fell back.
‘Quick, quick!’ Zeigler urged his men towards the door of the warehouse. The riffler chieftain realised it was unbarred and glimpsed the beam lying on the ground pushed deep into the shadows. Zeigler froze, mouth gaping. Something was very wrong! A spurt of fear made him stare back the way they’d come. He cursed his own recklessness. He’d been too greedy, too quick! The garden gate had been left open, the bar to the warehouse door was off its clasp. As for the guards, that second one – with his unkempt hair and beard, garbed in motley rags – was no bailiff, the other was no better. They were not household retainers but beggars. Zeigler took a step forward, his coven were opening the warehouse door, thronging together, eager to seize the piles of promised plunder.
‘On your guard!’ Zeigler shouted.
He hastened towards his comrades. The door swung open, his men faltered, staring into the dark but it was too late. An arrow storm whipped through the air followed by a clatter of weapons as the mailed men-at-arms sheltering deep in the warehouse, soldiers wearing the Guildhall livery, seemed to emerge as if from nowhere. The riffler leader drew his sword to meet hobelars all harnessed for battle; these swiftly ringed him, blades at the ready. One of them carried a sconce torch lit from the makeshift hearth. Zeigler turned like an animal at bay even as his heart sank: his coven were either being cut down or fleeing for their lives. He was now trapped by a circle of armed men. Zeigler’s fear deepened. He knew he was immediately recognisable in his earth-brown Franciscan robe, yet he had not been harmed; no arrow, no swift blade thrust, so why? He decided to test his opponents. He darted forward but the hobelars, swords still extended, simply retreated.
‘Well, well, well.’ A cheery voice hailed from the darkness. ‘Good morrow, Master Zeigler, we are ill-met by moonlight. Yes?’ The circle of hobelars parted to allow Sir Thomas Urswicke, Recorder of London and great Lord of the Guildhall, to come sauntering through. Sir Thomas hitched the costly, fur-edged robe more firmly about his shoulders to provide greater warmth as well as to enhance the gleam of his elegant Milanese breastplate. The Recorder pulled back his hood and loosened the delicately linked coif which framed his smooth, smiling face. ‘Put down your weapons, Master Zeigler.’ The riffler did so. Sir Thomas snapped his fingers for silence then cocked his head as he listened to the moans and groans of those rifflers brought down by arrow or sword. ‘In heaven’s name,’ he shouted, ‘cut their throats and stop their moaning. As for him,’ the Recorder pointed to Zeigler, ‘bind him fast and follow me.’
The Recorder led his cohort across the garden and through a wicket gate guarded by a company of Tower archers. They went along the side of the elegant mansion and onto the broad cobbled expanse which stretched along the thoroughfare and its row of the stateliest mansions in the city. Zeigler, surrounded by hobelars and Tower archers, realised it was futile to resist; his hands were bound tightly with a lead fastened around his neck as if he was a dog. The mailed procession moved swiftly as they entered the demon-filled darkness of what became the city after dark. On either side of the column, soldiers carried fiercely burning cresset torches, these illuminated the hideous spectres of the night, more dire and dreadful than any poem or fresco describing the horrors of Hell. Beggars, faces and hands mutilated and bruised, lurked in the shadows whining for alms. A cohort of lepers, dressed in dingy white robes, had been released from the lazar house: these could only beg for help during the hours of darkness, though they would be lucky to receive even a pittance. The lepers passed like a tribe of chattering ghosts going deeper into the blackness around them. The shadow-dwellers, the men and women of London’s Hades also prowled; they stayed out of the light searching for anything or anyone they could profit from. Such denizens of the night disappeared like snow under the sun at the approach of the armoured cohort.
Cursing and spitting, struggling violently against the harsh rope around his neck, Zeigler, sweat-soaked and exhausted, realised they were now approaching the heart of the city, the great open expanse of Cheapside. The stalls, of course, had been cleared and were nothing more than row upon row of long, high tables beneath which the poor now sheltered. Great bonfires had been lit to burn the rubbish from that day’s trading, as well as to afford some solace and comfort to the homeless and dispossessed who gathered around to seek warmth and cook their putrid meat over the flames. The constantly darting tongues of fire also illuminated the brooding mass of Newgate prison. The great concourse before it was now the hunting ground for a horde of vermin which scurried across to forage amongst the stinking, steaming midden heaps piled either side of the prison’s iron-barred gates. Zeigler thought they would enter Newgate but the Recorder’s cohort abruptly turned left in the direction of the Fleet and, Zeigler quietly moaned, the grim gibbet yard overlooking Tyburn stream. They proceeded up past the Inns of Court and onto the execution ground, a truly macabre place with its row of four-branched gallows. From some of these the cadavers of the hanged, bound tightly in tarred ropes, shifted eerily in the blustery night breeze.
Sir Thomas Urswicke had definitely prepared well: bonfires roared around one of the gallows, empty and desolate, except for the ladder leaning against the main gibbet post and the black-masked hangman waiting patiently beside it. The cohort stopped before the steps leading up to the execution platform. Zeigler began to panic. Seasoned felon, he recognised what was about to happen; it would be futile to protest. He had been caught red-handed committing the most serious felonies so he could be hanged out of hand. Sir Thomas strolled out of the darkness, his hooded face smiling, as if he deeply relished what was about to happen. He ordered Zeigler to be tied more securely, feet as well as hands, he then dismissed the guards out of earshot. Once they had withdrawn, Sir Thomas stepped closer.
‘You can hang, sir,’ the Recorder hissed, ‘and I could arrange that now.’ Zeigler remained tight-lipped. ‘You once fought for York,’ the Recorder continued, ‘a captain of mercenaries. You have a Breton mother and a Flemish father. For God knows what reason, you were brought up in Wales. Something happened there, I am not too sure what, and I don’t really care. One thing I have learnt, you hate the Welsh.’
‘What you say is true,’ Zeigler rasped. ‘But why do you mention it now, Sir Thomas?’
‘You recognised me immediately.’ Sir Thomas seized the end of the rope tied around Zeigler’s neck and pulled hard so the knot dug deep into the prisoner’s flesh. ‘You recognised me, sir?’ he repeated.
‘Of course I did. Your face is well-known, Sir Thomas, as is your loyalty to the House of York.’ The Recorder once again pulled at the rope and Zeigler gasped in pain. ‘Good, good,’ Sir Thomas whispered, ‘you know my name and now you know my nature. So, Master Zeigler, you too fought for York at Tewkesbury, you were with Hastings’ phalanx. Your task was to seek out a coven of traitors, Welshmen under the command of their leader Gareth Morgan, now popularly known as Pembroke. Yes?’
‘I recall that bastard and the tribe of traitorous turds he commanded.’
‘Quite, quite. They called themselves the Red Dragon Battle Group because they fought under the treasonous standard of Jasper Tudor who failed to join that fight. You do remember?’
‘As I said, of course.’
‘Now the Red Dragon Battle Group were to seek out our noble King Edward, together with his two brothers, and kill them. They were following the pattern of the great conflict at Evesham over two hundred years earlier when the household knights of Prince Edward, son of King Henry III, vowed to search out and kill the Crown’s most insidious rebe
l, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. They were successful, Pembroke was not.’
‘We wreaked great damage on them. They broke, they fled. I nearly captured Morgan, or Pembroke as he now calls himself. I threw him into a bear pit after Townton: if I had caught him at Tewkesbury I would have impaled him.’
‘I know what you did, Otto Zeigler, and I know who you are. Now listen carefully. You will be lodged in Newgate and, when I decide, you will be visited. We shall reach an agreement. Either that,’ Sir Thomas shrugged, ‘or you will strangle on that gibbet.’
‘How do I know that? You tricked me once, did you not, my Lord? That clerk who claimed to be from Sir Edmund Philpot was your creature, and not as deep in his cups as he pretended to be? You left that gate open, the door unbarred whilst those guards were beggars from the street?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Sir Thomas took a step forward. ‘So, Master Zeigler, when you enter my employ, I sincerely hope, for your sake, that your wits are sharper than in this present situation.’
Zeigler stared at the ever-smiling Sir Thomas. The riffler felt a deep sense of relief even as he abruptly realised that he could not die here. Just before the battle of Tewkesbury he had visited a witch outside Ludlow: she had told him that he would only die if he entered a wooden cage floating on water, and he had no intention of doing that.
‘You have a henchman Joachim?’ Sir Thomas continued. ‘He also dresses in a brown robe. We allowed him to escape tonight. I shall arrange for Joachim to be our intermediary, and he will be faithful, yes?’ Sir Thomas’s smile widened. ‘If not to you, certainly to me otherwise I will hang him out of hand. Now Joachim will bring my messages.’ He sighed noisily. ‘And, at the appointed time, your fortune Master Zeigler will take a turn for the better. But, let me whet your appetite. Pembroke is back in the city! Oh yes,’ Sir Thomas smiled at Zeigler’s abrupt change of expression, ‘the man you threw into a bear pit is back and, listen to this, he is not alone. So,’ the Recorder rubbed his hands, he then pulled his gauntlets out of his warbelt and put them on, ‘we have talked enough. Master Zeigler, your Newgate chamber awaits you.’ Sir Thomas patted Zeigler on the cheek. ‘I am going to place great trust in you, yes Otto? I have a very special task for you to complete. First, in this kingdom, and then beyond the seas in Brittany. You are fluent in the Breton tongue I understand. What if, my friend,’ the Recorder took a step closer, ‘what if I also gave you the opportunity to strike at Pembroke?’
‘I would seize it.’
‘And the traitor Henry Tudor in exile abroad?’
‘I would be equally eager.’
‘Good, good. My task, Master Zeigler, could make you and yours very wealthy, rich beyond your wildest dreams. If you fail or you don’t keep troth, if your wits are not sharper than they were this evening, well, as we take you back to Newgate you will pass the common gibbet: those of your company whom we cut down tonight are to be hanged there naked as they were born, throats all cut. A warning to other rifflers not to break the law.’ Sir Thomas’s smile widened. ‘But, as we both recognise, my friend, it’s also a reminder and a threat to you about the cost of failure.’
‘When will all this happen?’
‘When I decide, Master Zeigler. And now your chamber at Newgate awaits whilst I have other urgent business to attend to …’
The great two-masted war cog The Glory of Lancaster, was battling the waves off the small inlet at Walton-on-the-Naze Essex. Some dark-winged demon of the abyss had flown up to stir the seas and create a heavy swell which threatened to drive the cog and all it carried onto the ever hungry rocks. John de Vere, thirteenth Earl of Oxford, master and owner of the cog, stood leaning against the taffrail of his battered vessel. He watched the ship’s bum-boat being lowered down the cog’s side, clattering and banging as his ship pitched and rolled, plunged and shuddered on the fast-running sea. De Vere scratched his unshaven chin, half listening to members of his crew as they lowered the boat, desperate to keep it in place, safe and secure for the four men who would follow it down. De Vere peered through the dark; his watchmen had glimpsed the message sent from a shuttered lanternhorn somewhere along that lonely sea-swept beach. Yet, this was England, his country, his home. De Vere swallowed hard at a stab of profound homesickness. He had attached his star, his personal escutcheon, the five-pointed silver mullet of Oxford to the House of Lancaster and, because of that, he and all his own had been forced into exile. York was triumphant. Edward IV, as he styled himself, was King, supported by a cohort of loyal and ruthless henchmen, such as Hastings, Norfolk and others of that ilk, not to mention Edward’s two dark shadows, Richard of Gloucester and George of Clarence. Oxford steadied himself against the rolling pitch of the tide and watched the bum-boat on its slow descent, inch by inch to the waiting sea. He glanced at the four men waiting to go down the rope ladder once the boat was ready.
‘God have mercy on you!’ Oxford called out. ‘I call upon the Holy Trinity with faith in the Threeness and trust in the Oneness of the world’s great maker. May he have great pity on you for our enemies certainly will not.’
Oxford wiped his salt-caked lips on the back of his arm sleeve. What he’d just said was the truth. In the life-and-death struggle between York and Lancaster no mercy was shown, no quarter given. Edward and his henchmen had inflicted grievous damage on Oxford and all his kin and he would return blow for blow, but not just yet. England was now a Yorkist fief. The power of Lancaster had been utterly shattered at those two devastating battles of Barnet and Tewksbury earlier in the year.
‘Bloody defeat and total annihilation,’ Oxford whispered to himself. Two great disasters in which the House of Lancaster had been truly culled, its great lords either killed in the battle slaughter or executed on makeshift scaffolds soon afterwards. Horrible, cruel deaths; hanged, drawn, quartered and disembowelled. The tattered heads of Oxford’s friends and family now decorated the gateways of many English cities, be it Bristol, York or Canterbury. De Vere thanked God every day that he had been spared. He also prayed that Lancaster’s one and only hope, Henry Tudor, son of the redoubtable Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, would survive. Prince Henry was now safely in Brittany whilst his mother Margaret sheltered deep in the shadows, smiling and bowing to her Yorkist masters whilst playing the most dangerous secret game, to sustain and strengthen the fortunes of her depleted house and exiled son.
Oxford closed his eyes as he recalled the diminutive Margaret, small of body but with the courage and the stamina many warriors would envy. Margaret was a mistress of deception. She would smile and smile again at her enemies whilst devising her own day of destruction, a time when the Yorkist strongholds would fall, the board be cleared and a new reign begin. The countess plotted for the return of her son with an army which would be welcomed, but that was for the future. In the meantime, the likes of Oxford could only wait and watch as they were doing now, yet it was so hard! Edward of York was wearing his enemies down with the humdrum passing of the days which showed little hope for their cause. Oxford acknowledged this was true of himself. He was growing tired of this wolfshead’s life, lurking in crumbling taverns, sleeping on mattresses with nothing in them but chopped straw crammed with fleas, the stumps of twigs piercing the ragged coverlet. A bed of pain with stinking, threadbare blankets affording the only protection against the winter damp and cold. Once again Oxford peered through the dark which was now beginning to thin, the rising sun’s light tingeing the sky behind him. He would land these men and then go back to sea. In the meantime …
The exiled earl stared longingly at the coastline; beyond that dark ridge stretched fertile fields. His fields! His orchards which, when spring came, would bend their branches to the ground, their fruit so heavy, full and luscious. Around such orchards stretched meadows which housed wild deer, fleet hares, fat cattle and heavy-bellied swine; the source of much good food and revelry. But not now. This was a dark hour. He and other Lancastrians had no choice but to shelter in foreign parts beyond the Narrow Seas. They we
re reduced to begging for help and favour from this great lord or that powerful duke. They dealt with princes who could not be trusted and would soon play the Judas if the price was right. Oxford and his ilk lived in constant fear of being betrayed, arrested, bundled into some filthy prison before being bound hand and foot and delivered to an English cog despatched by Edward of York.
Oxford shook his head, wiping the spray from his face. He glanced over the side. The bum-boat was now down and its oarsmen would see their four passengers safely ashore. Oxford crossed himself and murmured a prayer to St Anne, his patron saint. What was happening now was the other side of the coin he’d been dealt. Sheltering in foreign parts could only be for so long, it was not just a matter of waiting. Pressing business demanded their attention. Oxford and other Lancastrians needed to fan the flames of rebellion and dissent across England, and so it came to this, sailing one of his precious war cogs off the English coast. He heard a voice hailing from across the water. Oxford raised a hand in salute at the fast disappearing boat, its rowers forcing it forward against the stiff-running tide.
On the moorland overlooking the beach two others watched the sea and both whispered a prayer of thanksgiving as they glimpsed the faint outlines of the approaching bum-boat. The two watchers, garbed completely in black, had hidden themselves cleverly in a thick clump of gorse using their gauntleted hands to pull across the bracken and sharp twigs, over and around their place of concealment. Christopher Urswicke, clerk of the privy chamber in the household of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, had chosen the place. Now he crouched, hood pulled across his gleaming auburn hair, his fair-skinned face, which one court lady had likened to a cherub, daubed black. Urswicke’s companion and comrade Reginald Bray, steward of the same countess, needed no such disguise. ‘Black of hair, black of soul and black of face.’ As Bray had once described himself.